Ronin
by sangga
Summary: Chloe's first year in Metropolis - from samurai to self-righting doll. ChloeLex
1. Default Chapter

Title: Ronin

Author: sangga

Rating: R

Disclaimer: Surely you jest.

Email: 

Archive: Please – email and tell me.

Summary: Her first year back in Metropolis – from samurai to self-righting doll. Chloe/Lex.

Spoilers: None. Future.

Feedback: Is hi-fibre goodness.

Note: Queen's English, folks. This is for Kathe, who first inspired, then conspired. It was her line that got me going – 'One thing she learned about the man was that he never met a printing of _The Art of War_ that he didn't like.' Thus, I've extended the concept – Chloe as retainer-in-training, an alliance-in-the-making. In her first year, she has to learn the hard way. Each quote is from _Hagakure – The Book of the Samurai _by Yamamoto Tsunetomo. And acknowledgements to the Dandy Warhols, for the soundtrack.

****

Ronin

**__**

"There is something to be learned from a rainstorm. When meeting with a sudden shower, you try not to get wet and run along the road. But doing such things as passing under the eaves of houses, you still get wet. When you are resolved from the beginning, you will not be perplexed, though you still get the same soaking. This understanding extends to everything."

It wasn't like she got off the bus, bag in hand, to stand forlorn in the rain at some downtown Metropolis depot station, friendless and alone in the big city. It wasn't like that at all.

Well, the rain part wasn't true.

But she had an address, which counted for something. She had keys, hard and brittle as nails in her hand, and it gave her a direction to walk in. The city had changed, but she knew the way. The lay of the land.

She had a one-bedroom walk-up with very little furniture and no phone connection. She remembered to buy a jar of instant on the way there, but she had to boil water in an old saucepan. And no sugar. Or milk. Which at that point didn't matter.

What she _did_ have was an advance on her salary. Thank god. 'Salary' – what a pleasing little word, fitting inside it a host of new connotations. She was interested to discover that 'salary' could be used interchangeably with 'kitchenware' and 'linen' and 'groceries'.

Oh yeah. And 'rent'.

Internship was…well, kinda boring after being your own editor, but it traveled okay. And she had big plans.

None of them had involved him at all.

He must have radar. She thought she'd managed to blow in quietly, no fuss no fanfare, but either she was way off on that count, or – as she suspected – he had spies combing the city for news.

Or maybe he just noticed her byline. (Way down there, in the back-bottom-farthest corner-behind the entertainment guide-beneath the obituaries section. Yeah, that must've been it.)

Either way, she's still using a bedsheet as a bedroom curtain when the phone rings one evening, and she, all unawares (cursing herself, still trying to slap that sheen of country life off her, like she does every day at work, it never pays to seem too green or, god forbid, too eager), answers it.

"Hello?"

"Well hello there, Miss Sullivan." She can detect grinning over the line, overlaying the mellifluous tones she thought she'd never have to hear again. "Metropolis welcomes you."

"Jesus…" One blink, one slip, and she's back. "A welcoming party of one? What, Lex – no pom-poms, no dancing girls?"

"Never thought your tastes ran to the burlesque, Chloe, but if you'd like I could arrange it."

"I'll bet." She can't help smiling in return. Cat-smiles. "Well goddamn. Lex Luthor, you unbelievable bastard."

"What a way to talk – and here I am, extending the hand of friendship."

"This number's unlisted, you know."

"I know."

"Great. My first local call, and you turn out to be a stalker."

"Chloe, that's what I like about you. You see right to the heart of my charm."

She _can_ see him, see him in her mind's eye. He will have the phone under his left ear, and the lines around his grin crinkling up just so. This late at night, his shirt – either crisp white or urbane black, she hasn't decided – will be open at the collar by one button, the knot of his tie loose by one degree. And he will sink into the leather of his dark brown 'Captain of Industry' office chair as he stretches his long legs out before him, swivelled side-on and tapping the pads of his fingers on the glass of his enormous mahogany desk, the one with all the drawers…

"It's good to hear a familiar voice," she says suddenly, surprising herself.

"My pleasure," he counters smoothly, ignoring her lapse. "How's city life treating you?"

"Ah, you know…" She trails her gaze over the second-hand sofa, general lack of floor coverings, books in precariously balanced piles against the wall, haphazard kitchen arrangements. "It's keeping me busy. But hey, not as busy as you, it seems."

"Pardon?"

"You don't remember? Jesus, Lex, it can't be _that_ old hat… Zantek, and Blix, in one week?"

"Oh yeah," he drawls. She hears his tone thin out slightly. "You've been staying current, I see."

"Occupational hazard," she counters, dry. "But seriously – two takeovers in 72 hours… What, were you hungry?"

"You could say I get peckish from time to time," he says, and she can hear his tiger-rumble down the line and suddenly her skin prickles delightfully all over, and she swallows and reminds herself that it's been a while, as he continues blithely. "And really, Chloe, you need to get on top of the lingo – the word is 'merger'. 'Takeover' is altogether too –"

"Predatory?" she supplies coyly.

"I was going to say 'gauche'"

She laughs, and he partakes, and then she sighs out contentedly.

"Ah, Lex…I've missed this, you know."

She hears the phone shift, and the creak of his chair.

"Yeah…" There's a momentary pause. "So, did you lose contact with everybody after you got into college, or was I the only lucky one?"

She winces. This will not be the fun part of the evening.

"Oh no, I discriminated pretty evenly across the board." She blinks against memories of first year, striking out on her own. What a fuck-up that had turned out to be. She prods him a little for reminding her. "And then I tried calling you, but…you got busy."

"Yeah. I did."

Three curt words, one for every year of the bitterest legal wrangle in east-coast corporate history. It had got very very ugly. She knew he'd very nearly done some time himself.

She imagines him chewing on his lip, that look in his eyes, staring at the corner of his desk. She waits for him to say it first. Which, after a beat, he does.

"Have you been back to Smallville?"

"No." She rubs her eyes, her voice suddenly wan, washed-out. "Not since the funeral."

There's a bleak moment of silence, long enough for her to remember the way she'd staggered, and how he'd taken her arm, at the cemetery two years ago. She blinks. This is the part of the conversation she'd been hoping to avoid, so she tightens her voice and resolves to get it over with.

"Is your dad still in jail?"

She can hear the rime crackle along the line as he turns to ice. Clipped consonants.

"Last time I checked."

"And my dad's still dead," she acknowledges brusquely, "so let's just skip over this bit, and go straight to the part where you invite me out for a drink."

Instant defrost as he gets a handle on her deftness once again.

"Uh – sure. Do you wanna come out for a drink? There's a place –"

"I'd love to," she says, and exhales warmly into his ear.

None of her plans had involved him at all. But that's always how it is with Lex Luthor – in for a penny, in for a pound.

oOo

**__**

"When meeting with calamities or difficult situations, it is not enough to simply say that one is not at all flustered…one should dash forward bravely, and with joy. It is the crossing of a single barrier and is like the saying 'The more the water, the higher the boat.'"

She believes she's pointed this out already. Thought she'd made it abundantly clear, in fact, that she is the kind of person to drink coffee but never to serve it.

The distinction is obviously lost at the Planet, however, because Perry keeps using her as his waitress _du_ _jour_. As a cub, this is probably to be expected – nobody seems to find her relegation to human Café Matic anything to be concerned about.

Chloe _makes_ it her concern. And when she thinks cub, it's tiger cub – all needle-sharp teeth and ruffled fur and testing her claws. She can be a bitch when she wants to be, but she's exercising her discretion. The coffee thing is usually considered a demotion. She turns it into just the opposite.

Once she found her feet, establishing the routine took her about two weeks. She arrives at the office, unloads, heads for the kitchenette – colloquially termed 'the galley' by the rest of the crew – and fills two mugs, pre-brewed because she boned up on how to set the timer on the coffee machine. Perry takes blast-furnace black with a tab of that disgusting aspartame stuff. She herself prefers hot milky with two sugars.

She collects the papers under her arm and handles the mugs like she busses tables every day for a living as she coasts down to her editor's office. Usually he's just hanging up his jacket as she breezes in.

"Hey, boss."

"Morning, Sullivan." He settles into his chair and grabs for the papers as she lifts her arm and lets them drop unceremoniously onto the debris on his desk. Then she hands him the mug and he eyes her as he blows on his coffee, knowing he's being played but enjoying the skillful amiability of it all. "So, you wanna gimme the Reader's Digest version?"

She slides into her usual chair, tucks one foot under her and slurps her fourth shot of java for the day, watching him over the rim of her mug.

"Berkowitz is on the warpath again."

"And when, exactly is our illustrious mayor _not_ on the warpath?" he harrumphs, and unfolds the headlines with his left. "What is it this time? Crime stats again?"

"You wish. Crime waves make better ink than industrial rezoning."

Perry sighs.

"Jesus, tell me it's the Docklands redevelopment and not the downtown."

She nods and sips.

"Mm – it's Docklands. Big players too. You've got Harrison, JMV and Locke Alliance all buying up waterfront like there's no tomorrow."

"What about Lexcorp?" White's eyes twinkle speculatively.

"Nothing yet."

"Uh-_huh_. Believe that when I see it."

He swivels his chair to take in the Metropolis skyline – no fires, no flashing lights – before turning back with that speculative look again.

"You got contacts in that camp, right?"

She raises both eyebrows as she swallows her mouthful. Then she shrugs.

"In a manner of speaking."

"Hm." He narrows his eyes. "I'm sending Jeff out to cover Harrison and James et al. You can watch Locke and Luthor."

She straightens quickly.

"But I could –"

"Forget it." He sips his coffee noisily. "And don't gimme that _look_ either. You'll have your hands nicely full with checking out those two on top of your other assignments."

He means the flower shows and obits. She makes a face. She might have squirmed her way into White's favour with the coffee and the _mano-e-mano_ banter, but he still runs the paper.

"Luthor hasn't even started making a move yet," she complains, trying not to sound like she's whining.

Perry's eyes go steely.

"And everyone will be thinking exactly that – right up to the moment he snakes around and sinks his teeth in." He frowns at her softly. The paternal tone must be her imagination. "You watch that horse, Chloe – Lex Luthor knows more sleight of hand than Houdini. And he has a really nasty habit of sneaking up and biting you on the ass when you least expect it."

Chloe pouts and nods, chews her lip.

While the concept of Lex biting her on the ass produces a mental image that she's not about to share with her editor, she appreciates the warning.

oOo

**__**

"You cannot tell whether a person is good or bad by his vicissitudes in life. Good and bad fortunes are a matter of fate. Good and bad actions are Man's Way. Retribution of good and evil is taught simply as a moral lesson."

The card arrives by snail-mail – very ye olde worlde of him, but she figures it goes with the territory of ye olde money, in that curious way rich people have of elevating anything vaguely old-fashioned to an exalted level of classicism.

She juggles her bag and a sack of groceries while opening it, scans quick, and then tosses it in with the tinned tuna and courgettes.

Social functions always give her the heebee jeebies. Social functions with Lex ought never to be contemplated.

Better to stick to things the way they are – her stomping ground, her turf, pizza and a glass or two of polite red in the living room, and loose casual to the point of excess. Fortnightly calls and occasional bitch sessions next to the stereo. He pulls her out of the apartment to dinner sometimes, but she hates everything except the food, especially hates that look he gets, that voice – his public persona coming out of its box almost against his will, as he deals with staff, and bumps into business acquaintances, and glares at the odd flashbulb. And she can keep up appearances, keep up with the banter, but she never knows quite what to do with her hands.

Still, she looks at the card again after dinner, sitting on the new couch with a glass of wine, thumbing the heavy paper and tracing the dark emboss, while she crosses her bare feet under her.

__

Just call him. Call him, and make your apologies – washing your hair, anything.

He answers after three rings, and caller ID already has him prepped and grinning.

"Have you eaten? I'm on my way to Mietta's."

"Yes, I have, thank you, and you know it'll be a cold day in hell before I let you drag me back to that place. They gave me lukewarm coffee because I wore jeans."

"They did no such thing, and you know I'd fire the waiting staff extant if I believed otherwise. And your ass looks perfect in jeans."

He's fired up, PlayboyLex to the max now, and she rolls her eyes, listening to him change gears as he drives with his knee. She's familiar with the technique.

"Get off it, Lex."

"What's your pleasure, Chloe?"

"You tell me. What's with the shindig?"

"Ah, you got the invitation…" His voice broadens as he smiles.

'Yeah, I got it. Should I frame it? – it looks prettier than my diploma."

"You should _use_ it, my dear. Saturday night. And don't tell me you're washing your hair."

She grits her teeth and re-tucks her feet.

"Socializing is not my forte, as well you know."

"But it should be. Can I entice you with snippets from the guest list? Headlines galore…"

"Entice all you want, I'm not coming."

"Jesus, Chloe…" He sounds genuinely irritated now. "Do you _have_ a career?"

"_Yes_," she returns sharply, "but it's in investigative journalism, not paparazzi tabloid mulch."

"So leave your camera at home." He's really trying to make a point, to win her over. She can hear it in his voice – more with the sincerity, less with the witty repartee. "Chloe, you said you needed to make contacts – well, this is how it _works_. Half of Metropolis big business will be there. And don't tell me that White isn't getting on your back about the Brierson rorts thing…"

She wonders if he's pulled the car over – she can hear the engine purring, idling. Maybe he's at a stoplight. She bites her lip and listens to his voice, all caramel blandishments.

"Come to the party, Chloe. Look around and see what happens. Two drinks. Honest to god. And if you don't get a bite, I swear I'll eat whatever crap you decide to cook for me next Friday," although he says it with the confidence of a man who knows his money is already in the bag.

She sighs.

"Even if it's humble pie?"

Now his smile sounds full-blown.

"Good girl."

"Yeah, yeah…I should be getting my head read."

"Maybe the night will surprise you," he says, and she gets that funny feeling in her stomach again, his voice purring like the engine. "Hey – I'm out of time. I'll see you on –"

"_Wait_ – wait a second. What do I wear to this thing? I'm not exactly –"

"Something low-key. Think cocktails at the Palais, rather than belle of the ball."

"Something low-key. Presumably not jeans."

"You turn up in jeans and I'll kick you out myself."

"Tempt me."

"I have to go. _Don't_ wear jeans, and don't come early."

He clicks off, and she's left holding the phone, a burr in her ear as her brain ticks over.

Saturday is three days away. Something low-key. Cocktails, not ballgowns. She thinks that nothing in her wardrobe really fits into either category. And she'll have to buy shoes.

Damn him.

The rest of the week is a blur. She tells Perry she's got a contact on the Brierson thing, that she'll have something solid by Sunday morning – crossing her fingers behind her back, half prayer, half lie.

She calls in a favour and borrows a pair of loose-slung black silk pants, but she still has to go out and shop for shoes and a top in her lunch-hour. She buys the first attractive thing she sees, a slip of jade silk confectionary, and it's not until she gets home and puts it all on that she realizes that the shimmering material, while lovely, dives embarrassingly low in the back and has a single artfully-placed button in front.

Wonderful. She's just paid half a week's wage for a boob-flashing singlet. Way to go with the professional look.

On Saturday night her hands are cold as she touches them to her cheeks, and there was absolutely no need for Lex to tell her to arrive late, because it takes her forever to get it all together. All the depilating, and the moisturizing, and the cosmeticizing, and her stockings ride up too high on her waist so she has to go for thigh-highs and a thong, and she can't wear a bra with the stupid top, and her hair keeps _flicking_, so she gives up and fixes a red camellia near her ear for camouflage.

Then there's her black clasp purse – a little old, but still serviceable – and – oh shit, coat? No coat. Never even crossed her mind. Fuck. And it's freezing – well, the hell with it, her trench will have to do, better than arriving with hypothermia, and they'll probably take it at the door anyway…

The taxi ride is only long enough to give her the opportunity to list all the reasons for being apprehensive, without giving her the time to allay any of them. Okay, so there's that little promise she made to her editor. And the fact that she has to return Marcie's pants without getting them stained. And the fact that she's uncomfortable shmoozing above her own social set.

And then there's Lex.

She's sure that she's going to spend the night with half her mind focussed on making useful-but-lightweight conversation with the guests, and the other half trying to figure out exactly what his ulterior motives are. Sure, they seem to be renewing some kind of friendship – the man knows where she hides her spare door key, for christ's sake – but if she knows one thing about Lex Luthor it's that there's always some sort of long term plan rolling around in his head.

She knows it's gotta be something more complicated than just him trying to get into her pants.

She's just about to smooth the material of said pants over her knee when the cab driver pulls over and smiles for his money. She hands him the bills, going over her own plan in her mind. It's one she's adapted from an old philosophy of Perry's: _Get in, get the goods, get out. And don't listen to a single word Luthor says._

Then there's a doorman, and warm air in the elevator, and the lift opens with a solemn ping, someone taking her coat discretely as she wanders into the penthouse to end all penthouses…

She'd forgotten how much his tastes in décor differed from Lionel's. Where his father was all dark wood dado paneling and chandeliers, Lex's idea of luxurious leans more towards clean marble, the colours of late autumn, the complementary textures of suede and leather, burnished tones of chrome, the dark lines of steel. It's the reflection of a man with his inner eye fixed firmly on the future. The suite isn't as cavernous as she expected, but the post-modern orientalism lends a feeling of additional space. She wonders if he's looking around, thinking of the guests on his floor as so much clutter.

The crowds of people are loitering in groups or milling around in the usual party way – she finds it interesting, sociologically, that people congregate in much the same fashion the world over, whether they're at a highschool social, a college kegger, or an upper-echelon charity bash. She watches a rather drunk silver-haired man in a tux navigate past her, assisted by a much younger red-headed female.

__

Hope you find the men's room in time, guys.

"I wonder if they know that the bathroom is in the other direction?"

She turns, to take in a tall young man with dark hair and linebacker shoulders nicely accentuated by the cut of his suit. He's smiling at her, and she's not too shy to return the favour.

"My thoughts exactly."

He extends a hand.

"Sorry – my manners. Pete Llewellyn."

The name rings a bell – she shakes on it, keeping her smile in place.

"Chloe Sullivan - nice to meet you. So, is mind-reading your only party trick?"

He grins attractively.

"At parties like these, yes. Except for this old one – would you like a drink?"

She's about to reply when a cool hand touches the small of her back.

"Pete, I believe that's my line."

She jumped automatically – she's seriously going to have to break him of this habit of sneaking up on her. It takes her only a second to correct her smile.

"Geez, Lex – you started the party without me?"

In front of an audience, his cheshire grin seems a little practised.

"Well, Miss Sullivan, now you're here we can pull out all the stops. Glad you could make it."

"My pleaure," she says unconvincingly.

"I see you've met Pete…" He steps forward and claps the younger man amiably on the shoulder. "Really, Llewellyn, if you stand by the door catching all the pretty ones as soon as they arrive, what are the rest of us going to do?"

Chloe drops her eyes to avoid seeing Pete Llewellyn's cheeks colour. But she makes sure she looks up in time to smile and catch her advantage.

"Hey, if you're still offering that drink…"

She's gotta hand it to Llewellyn – he recovers fast. With a quick glance at Lex, the man catches her gaze.

"Uh, sure. Why don't I get you a –"

"Scotch, no ice."

" – scotch, no ice, and meet you over by the window?"

"Sounds great."

"Great. Give me twenty seconds."

"You're on." She smiles encouragingly – it's always good to encourage the pathetic ones.

Pete trails off into the crowd. She and Lex watch him go, before turning back to each other. Her first thought is that he looks fucking incredible in black Armani. Her next reaction is to snort out a laugh.

"God you're rude. His father owns half the northside."

Lex just raises an eyebrow at Llewellyn's retreating back.

"His father owns a third of the northside. And Pete Llewellyn spends a nice whack of the profits on callgirls and casino gambling. He's a waste of skin, but I'm sure you figured that out all by yourself."

Then he sweeps his eyes over her, from bottom to top, in a way that gives her the shivers and suggests that all the preparations were worth it. A slow pleased smile spreads across his face, a mini-sun.

"You look ravishing."

She can't do anything but swallow and shrug.

"You said no jeans."

"I did."

There's the need to avoid flushing, so she breaks the moment, shifting from foot to foot.

"So is this gonna take long? These shoes won't be bearable past one, and I think my hair decorations are already starting to wilt."

He grins, leans in close as he slips an arm behind her, and she can feel his fingers on the skin of her spine, his voice growling low.

"Then I'll have you deflowered by the end of the night. C'mon…" He maneuvers them both towards the throng. "Let's go find your drink."

Once she gets her breath back, the rest of the evening goes pretty much to plan.


	2. Two

****

Ronin – 2

See Part 1 for headings.

"The occurrence of mysteries is always by word of mouth."

There's a note on her desk – psychadelic orange, pasted with a heavy thumb onto some esoterically-worded scrap notes she's been making for a potential report.

__

Looks interesting. Nice work on Brierson. See me. P.

She reads it three times before nonchalantly crumpling and tossing. Squashes the little gut-flutter, especially when Jeff Linden's all-seeing gaze catches her from across the room. His eyebrows are raised, questioning. She just shrugs before pulling out her chair. She's well aware that Jeff hunts those orange notes himself, that even as her senior, an orange note can make the difference between Front Page and Local Focus.

She also knows that he flirts with all the up-and-comings (and that _every_ office pun is fully intended), and she's been composing her reply to his anticipated dinner invitation for nearly two weeks – polite, sincere but firm, keeping it all amiable, reining in the sarcasm because she still has to work with the man. Jeff is not a nice guy. The thought of being in a confined space with him, like a car or a restaurant, makes her kind of sick to the stomach.

She keeps her head down until four, then wanders casually into Perry's office with two mugs. He looks surprised.

"You didn't have to do that."

"It was on my way." She shrugs as she hands him the mug, raises her own in mock-salute. "Call it sympathy for a fellow junkie."

She slumps into her chair with a relieved sigh and sips her coffee. He grins at her.

"Long day?"

"Kinda." Not for the first time, she wonders if it's possible to mainline caffeine. She shakes her head – back to business. "So, what's the brief?"

He snorts, before putting down his mug to stretch his back and smile broadly at her.

"Congratulations, Sullivan. You're the first person all day to skip past the simpering and bitching and get straight to the point."

"Simpering and bitching aren't really my style," she shrugs, but glows warm with the praise, slurping coffee to hide her smile. "So, are you gonna tell me or just let me dangle?"

"Sure," he grins. "Okay – the Brierson story was good…"

"Thanks."

"One for you. Now gimme something I can sell."

She baulks.

"I'm still on the Docklands thing –"

"Too corporate. No, don't get me wrong…" He lifts a finger at her expression. "…that's news, but I think we both know that's gonna be a long-haul job. The settlement dates won't even come through for another month, and it could take City Hall 'til August to get its ass into gear."

She tilts her head, knowing he's right, but still reaching to second-guess where his mind is moving. Perry waits a beat, then leans forward.

"I saw your notes on Llewellyn. You think you can make that stick?"

Her throat goes slightly dry, and she swallows coffee to clear it.

"I don't know. Maybe. It's just gossip and hearsay right now, and I haven't got any concrete –"

"But do _you_ think it's true?"

Perry's eyes are suddenly beady, and she can see a hint of his bloodhound, let off its leash. She understands that the acknowledgment of her own instincts means he respects her. She feels a little thrill beginning to build up inside, like a trickle of electricity, as she nods slowly.

"Yeah. I checked out his gambling debts and compared the sheets. I think he's in trouble up to his eyeballs. I just can't get my hands on the paperwork."

"I might be able to help you with that," Perry muses, and he's not looking at her anymore, just staring at the corner of his desk and rubbing a thumb over his bottom lip. Then he snaps back, master of instant decisions. "You're on it. I'll call you with a contact for the paperwork – gimme a couple of hours. And I need you to move fast on this, or I'll have Carl Llewellyn breathing down my neck about what a swell guy Pete is, and their next lunch date with Berkowitz."

Chloe moves her head up and down, agreeing to terms. This is as close to page one as she's ever been, and is this…is this happening? There's a sense of falling, of being numb and struck dumb. Perry skewers her with a hard glance.

"Have it typed up by Thursday, and I mean _Thursday_. No late-for-deadlines."

Then she blinks, and it's _real_, the whole fucking thing, the mug gripped in her cold fingers, and White flicking crap out of the way of his phone, the way he sits straighter in his chair, his curt wave an abrupt dismissal. She stands up, a little unsteady, and takes a breath like she needs to prove she still can, and gives her editor a quick nod which he doesn't acknowledge. Turning for the door, and her hand is on the sill when his voice calls her to look back.

"Chloe." Perry is lifting a pencil at her. "You might wanna have a little chat with your pal up in Lexcorp Tower while you're at it."

"What?" She's recovering, but still dazed.

"Check the fine print. Your friend has a stake in Llewellyn senior's north housing project. He might be quite interested in the fact that his partner's son is embezzling joint funds."

Perry waggles his eyebrows at her, and she frowns then nods again before moving away, out of the office, down the corridor, in the direction of her desk, sensing Jeff Linden's absurdly curious looks and her own heart, potent beating, picking up speed and steel as every step she takes gets firmer, stronger, more purposeful.

oOo

**__**

"It is said, 'When you would see a person's heart, become ill.'… Whenever anyone is in unhappy circumstances, you should above all inquire after them by visiting or sending some gift. And you should never in your whole life be negligent towards someone from whom you have received a favour."

Her keys, thank god, were in her coat pocket. It is the one thing for which she feels pathetically grateful – that, and the fact that he's left his jacket on the hook near the door, so she doesn't have to add 'heart attack' to the list of disasters plaguing her when she walks into her apartment. She slams the door for effect, doesn't bother to take off her coat, and marches straight to the phone, passing him as he lifts his head over the top of her refrigerator. She knows he's not hungry – he's just poking around to keep himself amused.

"Lex, there's nothing there, so you can stop raiding."

He blanches at the sight of her in a way that she would have found edifying if she'd cared enough to look. It's not her surprise entrance that causes the change in his face.

"Chloe –"

"Shut up a second…"

She's trying to remember the number but it won't come. Damnit. She switches hands, using her left to press the Kleenex to her eyebrow as she roots around the paper debris near the phone.

"Shit, where is it…I know I had it written down –"

He steps in front of her and speaks carefully, quietly, like you do when confronted by a ferocious animal.

"What are you doing?"

"What does it _look_ like?" She flails a handful of paper notes, not meeting his eyes. "I'm trying to find the number for Amex, it's here somewhere…"

"Chloe, your face is covered with blood."

He is supremely calm as she eddies around him, throwing pencils and post-it notes over the bench.

"_Thank_ you, really, for pointing out the mind-blowingly obvious, Lex, now if you have nothing else to contribute –"

She grabs for the phone. The hell with it – call information. He takes the phone out of her hand smoothly and dials, then hands it back to her. His expression is unfathomable. She just glares, her mouth a tight line, before the voice prompts start and she has to unglue her lips to talk.

"Yes…yes…Sullivan, with two l's…"

She speaks in short clipped bursts, trying to concentrate. The way he is now padding around the apartment, fetching things, is distracting.

"…yes…Chloe Maureen – no, _Maureen_ –M-A-U-R-"

He's in the cupboards. Over the lip of the bench, she can see his shirt stretching over the shoulders. A metal bowl is handed onto the countertop. Scissors.

"…yes…about twenty minutes ago…no…"

Filling and turning on the electric kettle. Now he's heading for the bathroom.

"…what?…no, not yet – I only just – yes…"

She can hear muted rummaging. She makes a face, then winces, pressing the Kleenex harder.

"…yes, I understand…thank you…sure, fine…_five days_ – is that the fastest you can – no, sure, I understand…"

She can't hear him anymore, so she turns, trying to track his movements – it's always a good idea to keep an eye on Lex's movements. He's leaning against the entrance to the kitchen, hands in tailored pockets, the picture of debonair impassivity. Watching her. She stares him down as she concludes.

"…absolutely…yes, I will…thank you…much appreciated, thanks…okay. Bye."

She clicks off in triumphant exhaustion and makes a fist around the phone.

"There." Then her face falls. "Ah, shit – now I have to call the cops –"

"Chloe." Once again with the soft firm voice, and he's covered the distance and removed the phone from her hand before she has time to think. "You should get cleaned up first."

She baulks at the proprietariness.

"What? No – _no_, damnit, I have to –"

"Chloe –"

" – and while I'm in the mood, what the hell do you think you're doing, inviting yourself into my apartment at any and all hours of the –"

"_Chloe_." He grasps her shoulders firmly, staring into her eyes. The contact is enough to shock her into stillness. That, and his expression. "_Stop_. Your face is a mess. You have to get cleaned up."

Just the facts, ma'am. No one could ever accuse him of tact. The most irritating thing, though, is his habit of always being right. And his other habit, of making people believe he's right even when he's not. But she doesn't need to be beguiled, because her eyebrow is really smarting now. She flicks the bloody Kleenex at his chest.

"Sure. Fine."

His grip on her loosens, and for a bizarre moment she almost wishes he'd stayed holding her, because of the sudden floppy feeling in her legs. Instead, she now has his large hand in the small of her back, steering her gently. She managed to walk the rest of the way home, she's pretty sure she can make it to the bathroom without doing anything embarrassing, like throwing up or passing out, but she bites down on a retort.

He's set up a stool in front of the wall mirror, and she hops up onto it, feeling undignified. She deliberately avoids looking in the mirror, concentrating instead on getting her arms loose as he eases her coat off her shoulders. The coat puddles onto the floor, and she's left feeling cold and sore and uncomfortable. He moves to stand in front of her, shielding her from the mirror – how quaintly gentlemanly – as she looks down at herself: dirt on her skirt (that's dry clean only, thanks _very_ much), the knees of her stockings are shredded, and spots of red on her white shirt, which is missing a button.

This is the one small detail that gives her the shakes.

If he notices her shuddering there on the stool he doesn't mention it, just rolls up his sleeves, and her eyes focus dazedly on his smooth tan forearms before he tilts her chin up and starts wiping around the gash above her eyebrow. For a while the bathroom is a quiet haven, where the only sound is him wringing out the washcloth in the hot water, with her occasional hiss of complaint. He has settled the metal bowl in the washbasin, and the steam from the water has fogged the mirror from the bottom up, like a mist of cloud on a lake.

In her tiny bathroom, squeezed between the toilet and the shower stall, the space between their bodies has a rather minimalist feel. He's working very slowly, in an almost meditative fashion, clearing the dried blood from around her eye and forehead, down her cheek, and she's had her eyes closed, but she decides to resume conversation because she doesn't want either of them to get too comfortable. Her voice comes out kind of grating, so she clears her throat and tries again.

"Thank you."

"No problem."

He doesn't look her in the eye, which is no mean feat when you're bathing someone's face. She gets a bit lost – she doesn't know what else to say. He smoothes the road.

"So. Muggers."

He enunciates the word in a cold, clear way that makes her blink, and somehow hope he never catches up with the men in question. She swallows and feels weird and tries to snark it off.

"No – a stampede of elephants. Yes, Lex, muggers."

Somehow it doesn't come out quite as biting as she planned, and her too-loud voice makes the bathroom seem even smaller and more claustrophobic than before. For some reason, this pisses her off. She tries to leaven the atmosphere with what drollery she can muster.

"Good old Metropolis."

"Sure." His curt humourless responses are unusual; she gets a feeling like he doesn't quite trust himself to speak. He's dabbing at the cut now and she winces. "Sorry."

"It's fine. Better you than some late-shift intern down at General." Her eyes roll; she's rambling. "Muggers. I mean, Jesus, if you were a mugger, would you pick _me_? Seriously? Anyway…forget it. They only wanted my bag, thank god."

__

Thank god… Lex looks at her evenly, before turning to wring out the washcloth. The combination of his expression, and the glimpse of her own face in the mirror – war-zone victim – sets off another explosion of tremors that she just can't get a handle on.

There was nothing in her bag – really, nothing, except her pathetically thin purse and some file notes and her tape recorder and a bunch of pencils with the ends chewed. Apart from cancelling the rest of her cards, the inconvenience will be strictly small-time.

But she still fought. Futile, and dangerous, and ultimately stupid. She couldn't help herself. She wonders how hard she'd fight if someone were trying to…well, rape her or something.

__

Pretty fucking hard.

And it's some consolation, at least - she didn't freeze up. No chance of that happening. She lived through walls and walls and walls of weird; juiced-up muggers would have to come a dim second.

But she still can't stop shaking. Damnit. She suddenly has the feeling that her insides are composed of a loose collection of wind chimes, that she can hear the faint hollow tinkling coming from her centre every time her body jitters. She closes her eyes and bites down hard and concentrates on breathing slowly.

And now Lex is smoothing the warm damp cloth down the line of her nose, across her cheekbone, and he must notice the way she's shivering… He doesn't say a word about it. He touches the cut again gently.

"I don't think this needs stitches. It's not too deep. Just messy."

"That's head wounds for you."

"Right." But he's no medical expert, and neither is she, so he just gives her a look.

"I tried to pull my bag back," she says, the words suddenly floating up to her ears from somewhere below ground. "That's when the second guy punched me. He was wearing a ring."

Up this close, she can see the way his jaw twitches.

"Well, you'll have a very fetching black eye tomorrow to show for it." He looks away and peels butterfly strips out of their sterile packet with deft fingers, snips them to size as he fixes each one on. "You might want to give some thought to the idea of not walking home alone this late at night."

She blinks out of reverie.

"I'm not gonna pay a cab to drive me three blocks."

He freezes and stares.

"My god, you are the stubbornest woman I have ever met. _Look_ at yourself."

He quicksteps around her to the back, and now she sees the tableau in the mirror – herself on the stool, some sort of horrible ashy colour, body drooping, with blood trails still on her face and in her hair and on her shirt, and him behind, his hands on her shoulders, forcing her perspective, with a dark look on his face, a thunderstorm, with lightning flashes of genuine anxiety.

"_Look_. Now just…think about it."

He moves back and turns to dunk the washcloth again – she can see in the mirror that the job is only half-done. She's still trying to take in what she saw of herself, but she can't help noticing his back. The way the muscles tighten and jerk as he squeezes the cloth. She thought he was angry at her attackers. Maybe he's angry at her, for putting herself in the situation, for acting without thinking, for causing such a mess over the price of a next-to-nothing cab-fare…

Fuck him. Money means nothing to him. Feeling grey, she blinks hard, and by the time he turns back around she's pulled herself vaguely together.

"So…can I ask what you're doing here? Apart from patching me up, of course."

"Of course." He grins faintly as he starts on the side of her jaw. "I was in the neighbourhood. I tried calling but I only got your voicemail."

"Right. You were in the neighbourhood. In the mood for a little slumming, were we?"

He looks at her, and his movements barely pause before he makes a steadied reply.

"You've seen my social circle, Chloe. I'd have thought you'd realise that it was the other way around."

She blinks, but she can't stop herself, she's on a roll now.

"So why'd you bother coming over if you knew I wasn't home?"

"I thought I'd drop by anyway and see. Your boss said -"

"You called _Perry_?"

"Yes." He's working hard to stay even. "He said you'd already left."

"Maybe I had a date."

His arm drops, and he stares at her.

"…and maybe you were being attacked in an alley as you walked home from work – Chloe, is this _going_ anywhere, or are you just being deliberately antagonistic?"

She crosses her arms around herself and shuts her mouth up tight and stares him back 

IhateyouIhateyouIhateyou.

Then his face changes and his chin lifts a little as he regards her. Epiphany. She frowns. He sighs, drops the cloth on the sink and spreads his hands.

"Okay. Go on. Do it. You'll feel better."

"What?" Her eyes are burning from maintaining her gaze.

"Hit me. Hard as you like."

Now she's forced to drop her face.

"Don't be stupid."

"Go on. Do it. I promise I won't sue."

"Headcase," she mutters. She shakes her refusal, and is horrified to find that it begins spreading. Her shoulders are twitching. _God, not again_.

"_Hit me_, Chloe. Really. It's easy. Look –"

Now he's reached out and pried loose one of her wrists, her arm stiff, and her hand a rigid trembling fist. He pulls with a small sudden force, and she feels her knuckles make brief contact with his shirt, the hardness of his breastbone. She squeezes her eyes shut.

"There. Now come on, put a bit of muscle into it –"

He pulls at her arm again, and she feels her hand thunk into his chest, and hears an awful quiet noise leak out of herself - her hand has collected a fistful of his shirt, twisting-vicious, and she's got him at arm's length, and she can't stop _shaking_…

…and now the bathroom is getting cold. How long have they been like this, with him gripping her shoulders and leaning over her bowed head, her stiff arm push-pulling at him as she shudders and sniffles, and her arm is aching and her head is _aching_, and she can feel his breath on her hair… She lets out a final hitching sigh, and lets her sore arm drop, and uses her other hand to swipe at her face as she looks up at him blearily. She swallows hard and wets dry lips.

"…sorry."

He rubs her shoulder once then lets her go, and turns again for the washcloth.

"Don't be."

"It was stupid. Walking home after midnight…stupid."

"It wasn't your fault." He folds the cloth, looking for a clean patch. "Just…be careful. This isn't Smallville. And you're not superhuman."

In spite of her headache, she feels inexpressibly lighter. Enough to make a wan grin.

"No, I just think I'm indestructible."

He snorts.

"Some things never change."

She frowns guiltily, wiping her nose on her sleeve.

"I crumpled your shirt."

"Forget it." He grins. "I'll buy a new one tomorrow."

She smiles and relaxes her shoulders, and suddenly the world is back on its axis. And her head is still aching, but Tylenol and booze are only just off-stage. Lex has resumed the fight against aesthetic disarray – now he's rubbing gently at a patch under her cheekbone.

"I look a mess, huh?"

"Not so's you'd notice."

"Funny." She wriggles her going-to-sleep butt on the stool. "So are you ever going to tell me why you came over?"

"I just thought you might be up."

"You thought I might be up… So, what, you came over to re-hash your day on the boardroom floor, and my day on the newsdesk, and try to fanangle a bit of gossip?"

"Sure. Except, if I recall, it's usually you doing the fanangling."

"Oh, really."

"Yes." He's started on her neck now, smiling, smooth as silk. "Really."

And suddenly the situation is almost too convivial, and she can feel his fingers through the cloth, and his other hand is cupping her nape, a warm thumb under the soft spot behind her ear, and she makes a grab for the washcloth before he gets to her collarbone, before her cheeks start colouring.

"Ah, I can take it from here - thanks."

He relinquishes the cloth and backs off, almost expressionless, before clearing his throat.

"I think we could both use a drink."

Then he slides past her and leaves.

She sighs.

__

A drink – here, here.

And one part of her is self-congratulatory, that she got through without completely disemboweling their friendship, and she finds enough strength in this to pry herself off the stool and make it to her bedroom, where she peels out of her grubby clothes and into sweats and a loose shirt and a faded pink terry-cloth bathrobe. And another alternate-dimension part of her is wondering why she made him go.

Which is too off-kilter even to contemplate, so she puts it down to delayed shock.

She consoles herself with the surety that you can't talk Lex Luthor into doing anything he really doesn't want to do, but more consoling is the glass he presses into her hand when she returns to the living room. She'd know the aroma of good scotch anywhere, and naturally he chose the scotch, because she bought it on his recommendation.

She refuses to stand on ceremony and trails over to the couch, sinking into the cushions for the first sip.

"Ah…outstanding. Thank you."

Now she can start to relax.

He lowers himself onto the cushions on the other end. It's a bit like having one of those enormous desert cats - a jaguar, or maybe a puma - settled on the opposite end of the sofa from you.

Not completely relaxed, then.

But there's a pleasant sensation of lassitude, lead-heaviness liquefying her body, so she concentrates on her drink, and on the quiet of the evening. She is inching into the cushions by degrees.

"Here." He leans across to her, hand extended, and drops three headache tablets into her palm. "I know you're not supposed to mix these with booze, but I've done worse and lived."

She chases the tablets with a mouthful of malt fire.

"You're a true friend."

"You're not going to get all maudlin-drunk on me, are you?"

"Not a chance."

"Glad to hear it."

"Mm," she remembers through a mouthful, "Have to call the cops."

"I don't think you'd get a terribly snappy response at –" He checks his watch. " – one fifty-two am. Try morning."

"Sounds good."

She sinks down a little further. He watches, with the edgy stillness of someone who's used to pulling all-nighters. Or having insomnia.

"So…you wanna talk about it?"

She shakes her head, and her words echo inside her glass.

"Not really. Try morning."

"Is that your way of asking me to stay?"

"Hah. Get me another scotch and I'll consider it."

He narrows his eyes at her.

"Take it easy there. Sculling this stuff is a waste."

"S'not wasted. It's going to a good home."

She waggles her empty glass at him, and he sighs quietly, forbearingly, and gets up to collect it.

He's right though – again. Good scotch might never be wasted, but she soon will be if she doesn't slow down. She wriggles, screwing herself further into the sofa, and doesn't care.

After the second (half-full) glass, during which he makes meandering conversation and she provides grunting accompaniment, she decides to take his advice and quit while she's ahead.

"Wanna go to bed now."

"Your best and most audible suggestion so far."

She tilts her head over to the cushions on one side and closes her eyes.

"G'night, Lex."

His mouth opens, closes just as quickly. Then he grins, stands up and moves over in front of her, sinks down onto his haunches. Reaches out with a finger to brush her hair out of her face.

Damn. And she looks so peaceful too.

Without further ado, he grabs her right wrist, and slides her arm, doe-si-doe-style, over his shoulder. Her hand tucks into the crook of his neck of its own volition. When she feels herself being pulled upright, Chloe opens her eyes and looks at the buttons on his shirt, which seems like pretty much the best view available at the moment. Her feet move, and he steers.

"…whatchoodoing?"

"I'm taking you to bed." His chest rumbles against her cheek as he speaks.

"…think you got th'wrong idea."

"No, I think _you_ got the wrong idea. This is me, trying to be a gentleman."

They've navigated their way to her room, cool and calm with darkness.

"…yr shirt smells nice."

"Don't push it. Here –" He pulls back the covers and settles her down. "Time to go nighty-night, Chloe."

She keels onto her side, face on the pillows, and as he lifts her bare feet up and draws up the blankets she blinks at him in a way that makes him swallow hard.

"…why're you being so nice to me?"

His expression becomes a swirl of confusion, settling into something indefinable. It's a shame she's past the point of being able to analyze it. He reaches out and rubs a thumb across her temple, so light it feels like moth-wings

"Gotta take care of my favourite reporter," he whispers.

Then he walks out, closing the door behind him.

**__**

Part Three coming shortly.


	3. Three

****

Ronin – 3

See header for details and disclaimer.

'These are the teachings of Yamamoto Jin'emon:

Single-mindedness is all-powerful.

To ask when you already know is politeness.

A man exists for a generation, but his name lasts to the end of time.'

It was in college that she realized, one night after a moderately enjoyable dinner for two, that she'd been comparing all the guys she dated to Clark. She'd been instantly mortified. But it wasn't until just recently that she realized that, all these years, she's been comparing Lex to Clark as well. She thought she was over mortified, but what took her by surprise was the anger. She believed she was pretty experienced at mental games, and here she was, pulling the worst kind of mind-fuck on herself.

Because, contemplating it now, it seems ridiculous. For a start, his physical presence is so different. His outline is sharper, more defined, and the way he tends to avoid casual touch exacerbates this impression. Although still wiry, he seems stronger now – certainly he's developed a greater sense of power, coiled inside him like smoke, but physically he seems broader in the shoulder, more _solid_ than she remembers. Old visualizations from when she was sixteen.

Or maybe it's because he's real, here, now, and her memories of Clark (and everyone else, for that matter) are all so out-of-date, even a little blurred around the edges sometimes.

His face has barely weathered in five years. Mornings, she sees herself in the mirror, maturing (_ripening_, she likes to think), and she can see laughlines and extra freckles and a few worn worried edges that haven't quite begun to etch deep. But Lex's face seems hardly to have aged. Still the blue chips-of-ice eyes, and full lips, and sharp angles at cheek and jaw and patrician noseline. Glissando skin, and she thinks it's because he keeps himself so guarded, keeps his face expressionless so much (not – usually – with her, she believes), as impassive and mask-like as when she first laid eyes on him.

Or maybe he gets facials. He doesn't seem the type, but god knows he doesn't seem the type to go in for Botox either -

And why the fuck is she even _thinking_ about all this crap – about whether Lex Luthor gets disgusting poisonous toxins injected into his wrinkles, for god's sake – because it's got nothing to do with why she's sitting here at a cramped desk in a dusty corner of City Hall Records Division, poring over file notes about a guy named Jorge Louis Owens…

Actually, she's got the files on Owens and his cronies, she's just not looking at them _at the moment_. At the moment, she's been diverted by papers she found in relation to the Docklands buy-up, and other papers about a certain Walter Harrison, esteemed elder statesman turned real-estate magnate. She knows that this is Jeff's brief, she should be asking him, but she doesn't think he'd know the answers to the questions she wants to ask, and she's not sure she even wants to broach the questions with him anyway.

Harrison is a player. His stake thus far, from what she's made out, is about one-third waterfront and a tidy collection of warehouses and industrial offices scattered over four blocks around the main pier. He's also tendered for some of the plots adjacent to the rail-line. This puts him in a slightly bigger league than James, Morris and Valdez, but he's still vying for land that Locke Alliance had already laid claim to before the area became marked for re-zoning.

This she's gathered from a morning's perusal. But it's nearer to lunch now, and she's currently absorbed in more ancient history. Chloe rubs her eyes and sighs - dust motes billow skyward, swirling. Her face feels grimy, and she seriously hopes she's not coming out in a rash. At least she has her sports bottle for the sandpaper in her throat. She takes a swig and grimaces – tepid tapwater, generally not her beverage of choice. She puffs a limp strand of hair off her eyebrow and keeps leafing through.

Indictments, alphabetical listings – the People versus. Some of the information is suppressed. Witness statements – certain names are omitted for their own protection.

She swallows around dryness. She knows all about that. Sets her face and keeps reading.

Corporate records of Luthorcorp. Audits, tax statements, balance sheets. Share listings. Blah blah blah. More pertinent information. Characters references – personal statements on the nature of Lionel's magnanimity, his righteous honesty, good citizenship, praiseworthy admirability, general magnificence.

She curls her lip. Reads on.

Character references for Alexander Joseph Luthor, trusting son, unsuspecting dupe, and all round nice guy. At which point her eye falls on a name. Hold there. Pertinent information.

__

Nathaniel W. Harrison.

She scans through for dates and data – age is right, association seems right. Current acquaintance, old friends. She bites her lip and wonders how much coke Nate – son of esteemed elder statesman - and Lex – son of business czar - used to get through on an average night in college.

Damnit damnit damnit. She's so on the money it's scary. And this is kind of scary too, and the worst part is knowing that it's probably just the iceberg's proverbial tip. She slides back in the wooden chair, unkinks her neck, and thinks that Perry was right. It always pays to check the fine print.

She wonders if there'll ever be a right time to tell Lex that it's his fine print she's checking.

oOo

_ ****_

"If one makes a distinction between public places and one's sleeping quarters, or between being on the battlefield and on the tatami, when the moment comes there will not be time for making amends. There is only the matter of constant awareness."

"Dropped some."

"Did not."

"Did too – on your shirt."

"Where?"

"Other side. Hurry up – marguerita sauce stains, y'know. No, _there_…"

"Thank you." He flicks the scrap off himself. "Glad I'm not washing this myself."

"Rich boy."

"Fuck off. You have wasabi on your chin."

Like a cat, he rubs his toes into the thick pile of her rug. They are sitting on the floor of her living room, backs propped against the sofa, with cushions. Respective versions of surf and turf – pizza and sushi, a bizarre combination of course, but such is life – lie scattered like the shipwreck of a Roman feast. Plus, the essential element of every bacchanal – the booze. He lifts his glass.

"A toast."

"Here, here!"

She grins, wipes her chin with a stray napkin and raises her champagne flute. He'd brought the flutes, because he couldn't stand the idea of drinking _Moet et Chandon_ out of tumblers. She'd rolled around laughing when he told her so.

He makes a very fake-looking frown into the air.

"What are we celebrating again?"

She slaps his arm with her free hand.

"Jerk. My soon-to-be-announced Pulitzer prize, of course."

"Ah, that's right. Awarded to Miss Chloe Sullivan, for outstanding achievements in the field of investigative journalism…"

"Keep going…"

"…and working above and beyond the call of duty…"

"You're damn right. McKellen's photo was crap."

"…and for finally –"

"Finally!"

"…reaching front page status." He smiles broadly and tings his glass with hers. "Congratulations."

"Yay me! No applause, just throw money."

She slurps her champagne and laughs, and he grins to watch. They are both pleasantly drunk. The stereo is playing to one side, with a CD he doesn't know, but with a title he feels is utterly appropriate, and now a deep voice is murmuring something about having a door in the back of one's head…

"Still can't believe you wanted to stay home instead of going out to celebrate properly…"

"Hey, this is properly. Properly celebratory, and I don't have to worry about dancing funny or having guys try and grab my ass." She looks at him before he has a chance to speak. "_Don't_ start."

"I wasn't going to say –"

"You _were_, you can't help yourself. Death by innuendo is your modus operandi."

He mock-frowns again.

"Well, christ, that hurts."

She grins at him as he tops up his glass, then lays her head back and closes her eyes.

"Ah god…this feels so great…"

"Chloe, I think you need to get out more. Two bottles of champagne…"

"I started before you came, remember."

"That's true."

"I meant the front page…" She tests the words against her teeth. "Front page…front page…"

He sips his drink and extends a hand languidly.

"Orate for me."

"You've already heard it."

"Again. Please."

She laughs and tips herself forward, settles her flute on a cardboard pizza tray lid and grabs the broadsheet next to her. He has a copy to his right. She tucks her bare feet under her, loose cross-legged, and clears her throat.

"Ahem. 'Metro Midas –"

"They just love those catchy tags at the Planet, don't they?"

"Shut up. 'Metro Midas charged in Porn Raid.' By Chloe Sullivan."

He grins and makes a few opera claps. She gives him a look.

"Again with the 'ahem'. Okay… _'An anonymous phone call has resulted in the arrest of one of the city's most successful and prominent businessmen, and the exposure of a major organised crime ring, with links to money-laundering and child pornography. On the basis of surveillance and an anonymous tip, police this morning raided the Metropolis residence of casino entrepreneur Jorge Luis 'J.L.' Owens, sealing off the premises and seizing computers, cash and other materials. Mr. Owens, 54, is the owner of four gambling operations in Las Vegas. He is also the CEO of private company FortunaX, which both owns and operates Crown Casino in Metropolis and has substantial stake in the Old Gold Casino in Gotham City…_"

She looks up briefly, but Lex is looking at the rug, making a rolling motion with his hand to encourage her to continue. She takes another breath.

"…_The heads of both the Organised Crime division and the Sex Crimes squad made joint statements this afternoon, confirming that Mr. Owens has been charged and subsequent arrests have been made. As well as files on casino money-laundering and other gambling operations, police discovered information and images related to child pornography, with links to both local and interstate studios_ –"

"Fucking vermin," Lex mutters under his breath then sips his drink, like he's getting rid of a bad taste. She nods, with her eyes on the paper.

"Tell me about it…_Supervising Detective Tony Souris from Sex Crimes said that 16 men were expected to face charges as a result of one of the biggest investigations leads into child pornography in the city's history. Police Commissioner Bill Henderson said blah blah blah_…" There's the thrill of reading her own work in print, but then there's the fact that she wrote it, and proofed it, and re-read it about a million times, so she skips to the last bits. "…_Mr Owen's law firm representative, Ms Angelica Sawyer, said that her client had chosen not to make a statement at this time, but that a press release could be expected over the next twenty-four hours, _and blah blah dee blah. The end."

She exhales in a rush of denouement. When she looks up, he's smiling at her.

"Magnificent."

"You said that the first time."

"Grandiloquent, then."

"Lex, are you taking the mickey?"

"Always. You take yourself too seriously."

"You can talk."

"I'll have you know –"

"Oh, stop –" She jolts upright, eyes on the ceiling, easily distracted. "Wait – I love this song…"

She grabs for the stereo remote and turns the volume to 'vibrate the furniture'.

"Chloe, it's three o'clock in the morning!" he yells, but she is already in audio cosmic space, smiling and raising her arms, then the chorus starts and she jumps to her feet, shaking her ass all over the place. He just watches her. She is bouncing around on the rug, her head bobbing and blonde hair flicking. She dances with her eyes closed. She is the bright spark in his universe, the sharp tang on his jaded palate. He wonders if she knows that, from his position, he can see up her skirt.

She knows. Frankly doesn't care. This is _her_ day, and she feels strangely and totally comfortable with him there, sole guest at her private party. He was the one she called first. How bizarre is that? She has no family to share this with, and all her old friendships have died away. He is the only constant.

And even if that weren't the case, she suspects she'd still be extending him an invite. Their camaraderie is tight, in that old 50's Ratpack sense of the word.

The song closes on a crescendo of cymbal crash and guitar feedback noise, and she throws herself back down on the floor, reclaiming her spot on the cushions, sighing happily and feeling lighter, airier, than she has in months.

"Ah god…" She thumbs the volume back down to 'respectably ambient' as a slow tune starts. "I've been wanting to do that _all day_ – at the office, even…"

He is studying her, with his trademark smirk.

"I was waiting for the air guitar moment."

"Hey – not _that_ drunk."

"Thought you said you didn't want to go dancing."

"I said I didn't want to go _clubbing_," she says as she sips. "Dancing funny in a club is all kinds of bad, but dancing funny in my own living room is perfectly acceptable."

"I could grab your ass if you'd like. To complete the atmosphere."

She chokes a little on her champagne. Sometimes his flirting is so over the top she has to blink to catch up. She clears her throat of the alcohol.

"Gee, would you, Lex? I'd really appreciate it."

But he says nothing, and when she looks at him, his eyes have narrowed, and he has a smile slow-burning its way over his face. Suddenly her insides give a shivery jerk. She knows she's wearing a deer-in-the-headlights expression. Then something in his face changes – he blinks and swallows, looks away to drain his glass and set it on the tray.

"It's late."

His quiet voice breaks the momentary pause, jolts her back into time.

"Um, yeah. Shit, I guess it is."

He sighs.

"I have a board meeting in five hours."

"You do?" She can't help looking disappointed. "Sorry, of course you do. I forgot it's only Thursday."

"Friday. We're into Friday now."

"Friday. Right. Well…" She reaches for the bottle and tips half the remaining dregs into his glass and the rest into her own. "…there you go. Last call."

"Another toast?"

"Why not." She's feeling reckless. He's leaving. She raises her glass, then frowns. "I was going to say 'to me', but it just sounds revoltingly precocious."

"Precocious is a nice change for you."

"Oh, you're a riot. All right then – to me."

He makes the glasses ring liltingly, a soft expression on his face.

"To you, Chloe Sullivan."

She knocks back her drink with her eyes closed, and when she opens them again he's still sitting angled towards her with his glass set down, staring in that way he does sometimes. She blinks in surprise.

"Hey – you didn't drink."

And then he leans over, swift and fluid motion, and takes her mouth, sipping the sheen of champagne off her lips before rocking back to his seat on her rug. Her eyes go big as an owl's.

"Sure I did," he says huskily, and he's not grinning.

Her arousal is so deep, so white-hot and immediate, that she knows that part of her has anticipated this. And his expression is so unfamiliar, all hunger and uncertainty, that she thinks she's losing her mind. She sucks her bottom lip, tasting him, knows she's in trouble when she doesn't recognize her own whispering voice.

"Do that again."

And the festive debris between them is cleared aside with one ferocious sweep of his arm as he reaches forward to claim her.


	4. Four

****

Ronin – 4

See header for details.

**__**

'Once a group of ten blind masseuses were traveling together in the mountains, and when they began to pass along the top of a precipice, they all became very cautious, their legs shook, and they were in general struck with terror. Just then the leading man stumbled and fell off the cliff. Those that were left all wailed, "Ahh, ahh! How piteous!"

But the masseuse who had fallen yelled up from below, "Don't be afraid. Although I fell, it was nothing. I am now rather at ease. Before falling, I kept thinking 'What will I do if I fall?' and there was no end to my anxiety. But now I've settled down. If the rest of you want to be at ease, fall quickly!"

She almost calls him a thousand times a day.

Almost. Almost calls. Not with finger actually on the speed-dial button, but thinking about it. Can't stop thinking about it. Can't remember the last time she was this unfocussed. Not when her dad died – she threw herself back into work then with an almost demonic fervour that's hardly abated, until now. So, maybe a long long time since she was this easily distracted. When she was sixteen, say, and a certain dark-haired farmboy could-would wander through the doors of the Torch offices, and make her mind blank out with a simple grin…

She's not thinking about Clark now.

Clark's fingers don't make her jerk and bruise, and his eyes don't fix on her with sacred sinful intensity, and his tongue doesn't lick the sweat off the skin of her stomach…

And when Lex whispers 'My god, you're like a narcotic," into the crook of her neck, with his eyes screwed up tight and his voice hoarse, she wonders if it hasn't been him all along. The way she's taken to this - duck to water – may be evidence enough.

The thought makes her jump around in her chair.

Minutes are like hours, and hours, days. She wishes her brain would stop fucking with the time difference, and forces herself to keep typing. Pads of her fingers brush the keyboard, and she can feel skin, touch bone, taste him at the spot where abdominal muscles and pelvic ridges meet. Marking the territory with her tongue, her jaw clenches. This is too much.

Next time is four hours distant, and the first time, she remembers, they'd kissed each other kneeling on the rug. She'd translated fast from shock to aggression, pulling at his shoulders, and his fingers had been shaking so badly that he'd lost patience and ripped open the front of her shirt, the sound of buttons popping, flicking onto the floor.

Her own fingers flick over the keys. She types the same sentence for a full paragraph, thinking about his gasping. The way the tension in his body builds with each exhalation, each shudder, tightening the muscles, cresting as he closes his eyes, as she urges him on with her own, pushing past throaty moans to the point of cursing, to the point of keening, to the point of involuntary noises, to the point where she knows he wants to scream…

She wants him to. She wants to reply in kind, and she almost does it right there in the office, because her throat is dry, and her blouse is sticking against her, and her skirt is rubbing against her thighs, and her body is burning, and –

__

Come on. She checks her watch again, but it doesn't bring the end of the work day any closer.

oOo

**__**

'Walk with a real man one hundred yards and he'll tell you at least seven lies.'

It's about 11.30pm and she's calling him from the back of a cab. Takes him longer than usual to pick up, and she wonders if he's in a meeting. Doesn't particularly care. Offers no preamble.

"Did you know?"

"Hi – I'm afraid that this isn't really a good –"

"I don't _care_ if it's a good time. Did you _know_?"

She hears the starch in his shirt crackle against her ear as he excuses himself – she waits in a storm of impatience, her skin itching. Then his sharp voice is slightly echoing; she figures he's in the hall, or the library, or whatever.

"Chloe, what the hell are you talking about?"

She flaps the paper jerkily near her face so he can hear the sound.

"I have Jeff Linden's JMV article _in my hand_, Lex. I was wondering if you _knew_ about it."

"You mean did I know that Aaron James was about to be indicted, or did I know that Linden was writing about it?"

She blinks at that, then ploughs on.

"Both. Either. Or."

He sighs, sounds too composed.

"I knew about James. Linden doesn't really concern me."

"You knew about James," she repeats. Even to herself she sounds pathetic.

"Yes."

"How long?"

There's a pause before he concedes.

"A while." Then, almost tentatively. "Are you still angry?"

Is she still angry? She rolls her head back, phone still to her ear, and blows out a breath. Does it _matter_? He has a way - he's always had a way - of dealing with her twitching fits of temperament. Soothing the savage beast.

But does it _matter_? Does it matter that the Docklands deal is now blown wide open? Does it matter that Jeff got the jump on her once again?

Both. Either. Or.

She'd been shaking when she left the office, with the ink from the hot copy staining her hands. Now she's just…

Shit.

She sighs again. Lex's voice manages to sound both innocent and sinuous.

"Can I come over and make it up to you?"

"I thought you were with a client?" she huffs, feeling petulant and ridiculous and longing all at once. It's a bit frightening, how her mind pulls her one way and her heart and body tug the other.

"Give me thirty minutes," he says, then clicks off.

That's Lex. No time for goodbyes. She tosses the cell back into her bag and runs her hands through her hair.

She's not stupid. She knows that the Docklands dominoes are all lining up now. What's frustrating and confusing is that she doesn't know which part she most dislikes: the fact that Lex's business deals are slowly coming to light in all their sneaking, back-stabbing, nefarious glory - or the fact that she's not the one getting to write about it.

oOo

**__**

'Not to borrow the strength of another, nor to rely on one's own strength; to cut off past and future thoughts and not to live within the everyday mind…then the Great Way is right before one's eyes.'

Yawning. Making a mental note. _Less romping, more sleeping._ She wonders if she can stick to it.

Tucked inside her bedroom, twisting the sheets, there's a sense of oasis. He's relaxed and open, and she peers into his eyes for underlying motivations and can't see anything but blue. Then he laughs, and looks away, batting her arm, and she can't see anything at all. The smooth line of his neck, maybe. Losing themselves in physical distractions, and it helps her to forget how careful they both are never to hold hands in public.

Her greatest pleasure is to lie behind him as he sleeps and trace lazy infinity symbols on his naked hip with her thumb. But then he wakes, and leaves, no matter how reluctantly, and all that's left is the infinity, endlessly stretching out into black space.

Work is coming back into focus.

Her articles are gaining strength, a sharper timbre, and her confidence is increasing. And it's with a confused kind of enjoyment that she realises her professional outlook has changed – maybe 'clarified' would be a better word.

Maybe it was the front page thing. It's like the time limit on playing around with altruism and philanthropic moralism has come to an abrupt end. Maybe it's her coming-of-age as a reporter – she knows what journalism is now. It's about the Story. It's ceased to be about the Right and Wrong of it, rather become more pure, more base. Journalism is letting the secrets out.

She really is a newshound.

She wonders when she stopped being so holy, and spends an awful couple of days trying to avoid thinking that Lex's influence may be some kind of toxin, absorbed through the skin. Then she has a realisation, in infinity time, and she doesn't have to try at all.

It's not Lex. Never has been. It's _her_ – always, right from the start.

Because the reality's not like the Ethics of Journalism theory she attempted to digest back in college – discussing truth, justice, integrity, and all that other high-moral-ground crap. That's just an A on a paper. She's had too much experience of the nature of _layers_ with Lionel to take the surface-reality for granted.

The reality is…

The _reality_ is what she sees when Perry's nose twitches. What she feels when she knows she's onto something good. A metallic taste, and ferreting out facts, burrowing through details, releasing things that have been tied into knots and hidden away.

Telling other people's secrets can be kind of addictive.

She knows that trying to find out the truth about Clark (and what _was_ that, exactly?), and unearthing the Weird, and delving into Lionel's past, and narrowing her eyes over Lex's business involvements, and even, if she wants to go all Psych 101 and strip herself completely raw, the mystery of her own mother – all this is the impetus for the development of her own journalistic philosophy.

Like all philosophies, it's a philosophy of power.

__

Secrets are knowledge, and everyone knows what knowledge is. Tell the secrets, and let the people come to their own conclusions, decide the truth, justice and integrity of it all for themselves. Call it like it is, then stand back and -

Far from making her feel like she and Lex share a moral parallel, it feels like the juncture where their two lives meet and fail to mesh. Her life's work, her driving force, has been to expose secrets, and Lex's talents have been honed to constantly conceal them.

It's an entertaining conceit that the existence of their relationship is one of the bigger secrets she's ever been obliged to sit on. She appreciates the necessity of it, although she finds herself squirming a little at work on occasion, when Perry's eyes squint and his comments veer a bit too close. Sometimes she makes a break for the bathroom just so she can lock herself in a stall and grin stupidly and bite her lip and breath out.

The fact that she can keep this one secret is almost a relief – she's not a compulsive blabbermouth, then. She _does_ have discretion, and she can exercise it. This ability might come in useful one day. And anyway, she has plenty of other opportunities for loosing confidences.

After coming to this, her personal epiphany, it all seems much smoother.

Except for Lex. Maybe it's time for a little re-negotiation.

She's lying in bed, propped up on the pillows, eating strawberries out of the plastic carton, and the sheets are pooled around her hips, ebbing up as high as her nipples. He's lying beside her, bare-chested in dress pants, the glow from the little tv blueing his tanned angles and curves, as he watches the stock reports with the sound turned down and absently strokes her knee with one hand.

It's late. She'll be yawning by midday, and this brings a chuckle. He looks up lazily at the sound.

"What is it?"

"You." She hands him a strawberry. "You just got out of a meeting and you're still plugged in."

He shrugs ruefully, attention still on the screen.

"Have to be. I've got to stare down a bunch of associate execs tomorrow – consider it late night cramming."

"Stare them down? Sounds like hypnotizing chickens or something."

He lifts an eyebrow and licks juice off the pad of his thumb.

"You'd be amazed by the similarities. Mainly, you just have to avoid blinking."

She grins.

"And then they get frightened, and call you the Most Wild Thing of All?"

"Come again?"

He seems genuinely perplexed, and she shakes her head in wonder and sympathy.

"My god, you really had absolutely no kind of childhood at all, did you?"

He locks eyes for a second, his expression tense, until she smoothes his jaw with her hand. He doesn't need to say anything. She thinks that growing up a Luthor actually might have been quite close, in essence, to all those Sendak drawings. The ones where there were no captions, and nothing was really spelled out, but you looked at the direction of the monsters' eyes and worried about Max's safety.

She rubs her palm across the back of his neck, and he smiles faintly, reassured, before turning back to the tv.

Another strawberry. She watches his face, and decides that now is as good a time as any.

"Hey, I need to talk to you about something."

"Mm?"

"I've been working on an article all week about the casino bunfight…"

"Fill me in."

"Well, now that Owens is practically dead and buried there's been this almighty brawl over the casino tupperware and who gets what… But you already know about that, right?"

His eyes narrow in profile before he nonchalantly leans for the remote and flicks off the reports. Now it's just the lamp on her bedside table illuminating his calculating curiosity.

"What do you know?"

She sucks on a bit of pink pith before depositing it back in the carton.

"I know that your press secretary won't tell me how much you've already bought." She licks a sticky fingertip. "But that's okay. I think I can get a few more details off one of the casino reps. That guy – what's his name? – Rourke."

"He's offered to tell you?" Lex's voice is tellingly blasé.

She shrugs lightly.

"Well, he's offered to take me out to dinner."

His eyebrows bunch suddenly, like they weren't expecting it, and he blinks hard for a moment. Then she laughs at him, pats his arm.

"Relax, Lex. I haven't got any plans to make the jump from journalism to full-time prostitution just yet. Not for this story, anyway."

"Well. I'm glad to hear that."

But he's looking at her with new eyes. Good. It's about time he started thinking of her as an equal.

She leans over and kisses his lips firmly. If she listens hard, she can hear his brain whirring. Then she lifts her eyebrows at him, anticipating.

There's only a momentary pause as his mental circuits click into new pathways. The corners of his lips curl up in a wary grin, and his gaze is assessing.

"But…you'd still like the information."

"Yes," she nods. "I don't want to jeopardise your business dealings but…yeah, I want this article to go."

This is a gamble, she knows. It's the balance point of their relationship that she's testing – how much he needs to conceal versus how much she's allowed to reveal. The weight of respective self-interest burdens the air. Parley is always a dangerous time – when you lay down your weapons in front of your opponent and stand back, hands spread and empty.

It comes down to how much he trusts her.

Lex's face is calmly neutral in contemplation, and he never breaks eye contact. There's a terrible moment of sweating, when she thinks he's going to get up and walk out – then she blinks, and he's nodding slowly.

"Okay. I'll release some information on the acquisitions tomorrow. Go through Huttle again – you'll have to make an appointment. And it won't be exclusive, of course. I'll release a press statement after lunch, but you'll have about a four hour jump."

She sighs out - hadn't realised she was holding her breath – and then grins at him.

"Thank you."

"No problem."

His smile is faint. He selects a strawberry carefully, lets his eyes focus down. When he looks back up, there's the shadow of a battle on his face.

"Are you sure you know what you're doing?"

She's still sparking off having traversed the last junction, but she can follow his mood.

"Yes, I'm sure. C'mon - I'm a big girl, I can take care of myself."

She thinks he's talking about handling the politics of the article, but his next movement takes her off guard.

"I think I'm polluting you," he mutters, reaching up to tuck a shred of blonde behind her ear.

Surprised, she gapes at him for a second before frowning.

"You think you're…Jesus, Lex, _no_. It's…look, don't take this the wrong way, but it's really not about you."

And it's not. It's about her. She's changing. His influence is only one of many factors, although she acknowledges that he might have been the catalyst. He should _know_ all this – he's been reading her articles for long enough now.

He looks at her again in that soft pensive way before the words come out.

"And is this what you want?"

There's so many layers in the question she's not sure what he's referring to. She settles for the simplest one, answering them all as she pushes the strawberries and the sheet out of the way, curls her arms around his neck , slides her warm nakedness in, brings their faces close.

"What do _you_ think?"

**__**

Part five coming.


	5. Five

**__**

'Walk with a real man one hundred yards and he'll tell you at least seven lies.'

Lex has made her lose concentration once; it's really no great effort on his part for him to make her lose it again. Both titillating and frustrating, the way repetition has in no way dulled his effect.

It's about 11.30pm and she's calling him from the back of a cab. Takes him longer than usual to pick up, and she wonders if he's in a meeting. Doesn't particularly care. She's banking on his caller id and offers no preamble.

"Did you know?"

"Hi – I'm afraid that this isn't really a good –"

"I don't _care_ if it's a good time. Did you _know_?"

She hears the starch in his shirt crackle against her ear as he excuses himself – she waits in a storm of impatience, her skin itching. Then his sharp voice is slightly echoing; she figures he's in the hall, or the library, or whatever.

"Chloe, what the hell are you talking about?"

She flaps the paper jerkily near her face so he can hear the sound.

"I have Jeff Linden's JMV article _in my hand_, Lex. I was wondering if you _knew_ about it."

"You mean did I know that Aaron James was about to be indicted, or did I know that Linden was writing about it?"

She blinks at that, then ploughs on.

"Both. Either. Or."

He sighs, sounds too composed.

"I knew about James. Linden doesn't really concern me."

"You knew about James," she repeats. Even to herself she sounds pathetic.

"Yes."

"How long?"

There's a pause before he concedes.

"A while." Then, almost tentatively. "Are you still angry?"

__

Is she still angry? She rolls her head back, phone still to her ear, and blows out a breath. Does it _matter_? He has a way of dealing with her twitching fits of temperament. Soothing the savage beast.

But does it _matter_? Does it matter that the Docklands deal is now blown wide open? Does it matter that Jeff got the jump on her once again?

Both. Either. Or.

She'd been shaking when she left the office, with the ink from the hot copy staining her hands. Now she's just…

Shit.

She sighs again. Lex's voice manages to sound both innocent and sinuous.

"Can I come over and make it up to you?"

"I thought you were with a client?" she huffs, feeling petulant and ridiculous and longing all at once. It's a bit frightening, how her mind pulls her one way and her heart and body tug the other.

"Give me thirty minutes," he says, then clicks off.

That's Lex. No time for goodbyes. She tosses the cell back into her bag and runs her hands through her hair.

She's not stupid. She knows that the Docklands dominoes are all lining up now. What's frustrating and confusing is that she doesn't know which part she most dislikes: the fact that Lex's business deals are slowly coming to light in all their sneaking, back-stabbing, nefarious glory - or the fact that she's not the one getting to write about it.

oOo

**__**

'Not to borrow the strength of another, nor to rely on one's own strength; to cut off past and future thoughts and not to live within the everyday mind…then the Great Way is right before one's eyes.'

Yawning. Making a mental note. _Less romping, more sleeping._ She wonders if she can stick to it.

Tucked inside her bedroom, twisting the sheets, there's a sense of oasis. He's relaxed and open, and she peers into his eyes for underlying motivations and can't see anything but blue. Then he laughs, and looks away, batting her arm, and she can't see anything at all. The smooth line of his neck, maybe. Losing themselves in physical distractions, and it helps her to forget how careful they both are never to hold hands in public.

Her greatest pleasure is to lie behind him as he sleeps and trace lazy infinity symbols on his naked hip with her thumb. But then he wakes, and leaves, no matter how reluctantly, and all that's left is the infinity, endlessly stretching out into black space.

Work is coming back into focus.

Her articles are gaining strength, a sharper timbre, and her confidence is increasing. And it's with a confused kind of enjoyment that she realises her professional outlook has changed – maybe 'clarified' would be a better word.

Maybe it was the front page thing. It's like the time limit on playing around with altruism and philanthropic moralism has come to an abrupt end. Maybe it's her coming-of-age as a reporter – she knows what journalism is now. It's about the Story. It's ceased to be about the Right and Wrong of it, rather become more pure, more base. Journalism is letting the secrets out.

She really is a newshound.

She wonders when she stopped being so holy, and spends an awful couple of days trying to avoid thinking that Lex's influence may be some kind of toxin, absorbed through the skin. Then she has a realisation, in infinity time, and she doesn't have to try at all.

It's not Lex. Never has been. It's _her_ – always, right from the start.

Because the reality's not like the Ethics of Journalism theory she attempted to digest back in college – discussing truth, justice, integrity, and all that other high-moral-ground crap. That's just an A on a paper. She's had too much experience of the nature of _layers_ with Lionel to take the surface-reality for granted.

The reality is…

The _reality_ is what she sees when Perry's nose twitches. What she feels when she knows she's onto something good. A metallic taste, and ferreting out facts, burrowing through details, releasing things that have been tied into knots and hidden away.

Telling other people's secrets can be kind of addictive.

She knows that trying to find out the truth about Clark (and what _was_ that, exactly?), and unearthing the Weird, and delving into Lionel's past, and narrowing her eyes over Lex's business involvements, and even, if she wants to go all Psych 101 and strip herself completely raw, the mystery of her own mother – all this is the impetus for the development of her own journalistic philosophy.

Like all philosophies, it's a philosophy of power.

__

Secrets are knowledge, and everyone knows what knowledge is. Tell the secrets, and let the people come to their own conclusions, decide the truth, justice and integrity of it all for themselves. Call it like it is, then stand back and…

Far from making her feel like she and Lex share a moral parallel, it feels like the juncture where their two lives meet and fail to mesh. Her life's work, her driving force, has been to expose secrets, and Lex's talents have been honed to constantly conceal them.

It's an entertaining conceit that the existence of their relationship is one of the bigger secrets she's ever been obliged to sit on. She appreciates the necessity of it, although she finds herself squirming a little at work on occasion, when Perry's eyes squint and his comments veer a bit too close. Sometimes she makes a break for the bathroom just so she can lock herself in a stall and grin stupidly and bite her lip and breath out.

The fact that she can keep this one secret is almost a relief – she's not a compulsive blabbermouth, then. She _does_ have discretion, and she can exercise it. This ability might come in useful one day. And anyway, she has plenty of other opportunities for loosing confidences.

After coming to this, her personal epiphany, it all seems much smoother.

Except for Lex. Maybe it's time for a little re-negotiation.

She's lying in bed, propped up on the pillows, eating strawberries out of the plastic carton, and the sheets are pooled around her hips, ebbing up as high as her nipples. He's lying beside her, bare-chested in dress pants, the glow from the little tv blueing his tanned angles and curves, as he watches the stock reports with the sound turned down and absently strokes her knee with one hand.

It's late. She'll be yawning by midday, and this brings a chuckle. He looks up lazily at the sound.

"What is it?"

"You." She hands him a strawberry. "You just got out of a meeting and you're still plugged in."

He shrugs ruefully, attention still on the screen.

"Have to be. I've got to stare down a bunch of associate execs tomorrow – consider it late night cramming."

"Stare them down? Sounds like hypnotizing chickens or something."

He lifts an eyebrow and licks juice off the pad of his thumb.

"You'd be amazed by the similarities. Mainly, you just have to avoid blinking."

She grins.

"And then they get frightened, and call you the Most Wild Thing of All?"

"Come again?"

He seems genuinely perplexed, and she shakes her head in wonder and sympathy.

"My god, you really had absolutely no kind of childhood at all, did you?"

He locks eyes for a second, his expression tense, until she smoothes his jaw with her hand. He doesn't need to say anything. She thinks that growing up a Luthor actually might have been quite close, in essence, to all those Sendak drawings. The ones where there were no captions, and nothing was really spelled out, but you looked at the direction of the monsters' eyes and worried about Max's safety.

She rubs her palm across the back of his neck, and he smiles faintly, reassured, before turning back to the tv.

Another strawberry. She watches his face, and decides that now is as good a time as any.

"Hey, I need to talk to you about something."

"Mm?"

"I've been working on an article all week about the casino bunfight…"

"Fill me in."

"Well, now that Owens is practically dead and buried there's been this almighty brawl over the casino tupperware and who gets what… But you already know about that, right?"

His eyes narrow in profile before he nonchalantly leans for the remote and flicks off the reports. Now it's just the lamp on her bedside table illuminating his calculating curiosity.

"What do you know?"

She sucks on a bit of pink pith before depositing it back in the carton.

"I know that your press secretary won't tell me how much you've already bought." She licks a sticky fingertip. "But that's okay. I think I can get a few more details off one of the casino reps. That guy – what's his name? – Rourke."

"He's offered to tell you?" Lex's voice is tellingly blasé.

She shrugs lightly.

"Well, he's offered to take me out to dinner."

His eyebrows bunch suddenly, like they weren't expecting it, and he blinks hard for a moment. Then she laughs at him, pats his arm.

"Relax, Lex. I haven't got any plans to make the jump from journalism to full-time prostitution just yet. Not for this story, anyway."

"Well. I'm glad to hear that."

But he's looking at her with new eyes. Good. It's about time he started thinking of her as an equal.

She leans over and kisses his lips firmly. If she listens hard, she can hear his brain whirring. Then she lifts her eyebrows at him, anticipating.

There's only a momentary pause as his mental circuits click into new pathways. The corners of his lips curl up in a wary grin, and his gaze is assessing.

"But…you'd still like the information."

"Yes," she nods. "I don't want to jeopardise your business dealings but…yeah, I want this article to go."

This is a gamble, she knows. It's the balance point of their relationship that she's testing – how much he needs to conceal versus how much she's allowed to reveal. The weight of respective self-interest burdens the air. Parley is always a dangerous time – when you lay down your weapons in front of your opponent and stand back, hands spread and empty.

It comes down to how much he trusts her.

Lex's face is calmly neutral in contemplation, and he never breaks eye contact. There's a terrible moment of sweating, when she thinks he's going to get up and walk out – then she blinks, and he's nodding slowly.

"Okay. I'll release some information on the acquisitions tomorrow. Go through Huttle again – you'll have to make an appointment. And it won't be exclusive, of course. I'll release a press statement after lunch, but you'll have about a four hour jump."

She sighs out - hadn't realised she was holding her breath – and then grins at him.

"Thank you."

"No problem."

His smile is faint. He selects a strawberry carefully, lets his eyes focus down. When he looks back up, there's the shadow of a battle on his face.

"Are you sure you know what you're doing?"

She's still sparking off having traversed the last junction, but she can follow his mood.

"Yes, I'm sure. C'mon - I'm a big girl, I can take care of myself."

She thinks he's talking about handling the politics of the article, but his next movement takes her off guard.

"I think I'm polluting you," he mutters, reaching up to tuck a shred of blonde behind her ear.

Surprised, she gapes at him for a second before frowning.

"You think you're…Jesus, Lex, _no_. It's…look, don't take this the wrong way, but it's really not about you."

And it's not. It's about her. She's changing. His influence is only one of many factors, although she acknowledges that he might have been the catalyst. He should _know_ all this – he's been reading her articles for long enough now.

He looks at her again in that soft pensive way before the words come out.

"And is this what you want?"

There's so many layers in the question she's not sure what he's referring to. She settles for the simplest one, answering them all as she pushes the strawberries and the sheet out of the way, curls her arms around his neck , slides her warm nakedness in, brings their faces close.

"What do _you_ think?"

oOo

**__**

"To hate injustice and stand on righteousness is a difficult thing. Furthermore, to think that being righteous is the best one can do and to do one's utmost to be righteous will, on the contrary, bring many mistakes."

She's at her desk. It's the night before the paper goes to print, and she's looking at her desk.

It's not a new desk or anything, but it's certainly larger than any other desk (or study corral, or kitchen tabletop, or coffeeshop bench) that she's ever prepped and written stories on before. And it's wood. It has drawers, into which the accumulation of pencils and papers and computer discs and all her other assorted shit has gradually drifted before she even had time to really think about it much.

She looks at the positioning while she leans back in her chair. Her desk at A), Jeff Linden's at B), draw a diagonal to corner office at C), and Perry's 'editor' plaque at D)… Add it all together and you have –

- a whole lot of stupid trig questions from her highschool math class (which she failed). Or a 'Path to Prospective Career Advancement in Three Easy Steps'. Or a raging case of conspiracy theory. Or acute paranoia. Or all of the above, hold the inferiority complex.

She swivels in her chair, with her hands on the armrests for balance. Spin left. Spin right. Almost everyone else has gone home, after the frenetic rush to lay out the weekend edition – it's all in the can now. She delivered the coup de grace herself. Front page, baby, front page.

She stops swivelling and pulls the white manilla envelope out of her desk drawer, looks at it for a second, opens it and pulls out the record request form that she can't remember signing, and the photocopied paperwork that was the last jigsaw piece in the puzzle, the crux of her report damning Edward Locke to some corporate version of the seventh Chinese hell.

She has no feelings of regret. Locke was a germ of the very first order, cost-cutting here, embezzling there – the kind of businessman who'd screw his own grandmother for an extra zero on the company bottom line at end-of-financial-year. The kind of guy who's profiteering ground the lives of many of his employees right into the dust.

And it's not like she didn't do the shit-work – _she_ was the one who sat up all night going through the balance sheets and tax audit reports. She's nailed this little fucker right to the wall, and quite probably helped out a whole lot of company workers who now have an avenue through which to pursue the issue of employee restitution.

Thinking about it as a kind of homage to her father – the company worker _par excellence_ - dissolves some of the oily aftertaste.

Now she lifts the white envelope to her face, closes her eyes. Inhales. She knows it's crazy, he would never get that close…it's only her imagination. But just for a second, she breathes past the office's pervading stench of stale coffee and sweat and newsprint, reaching out for what she thought she smelled before…

The warm woody tones, the flash of leather, tang of spice, the hint of musk, money, power in his cologne.

Imagination like hell.

She puts all the papers back into the envelope and seals it up before slipping it into her bag. She's standing behind her chair, in the middle of deciding whether to find herself a safety deposit box or just burn the whole damn lot, when Perry sneaks up on her. For a conspicuous kind of guy, he can be remarkably quiet.

"You ready to pack it in?"

She jumps a little and turns. He's standing a few feet away with his hands in his pockets, jacket slung through the gully of wrist and waist. He looks tired, but alert.

She barks out a laugh, hand to her chest.

"Jesus, boss – you trying to send me to an early grave?"

"Sorry. Didn't mean to startle you." He grins. "I think you need to get mugged more often, Sullivan. We gotta toughen you up."

Chloe makes a face.

"Thanks."

"Don't mention it."

She continues collecting her belongings. If he wants to say something he won't hesitate, she knows. Perry doesn't go in for dragging out the suspense.

"I'm curious, Chloe."

She throws a few pencils into her bag, takes a breath and turns.

"How so?"

Perry leans his butt comfortably on the edge of the desk, maintaining a polite distance.

"I was just wondering how you managed to get information that my own City Hall contact couldn't get access to." He shrugs. "Just a professional interest, you understand."

She nods slowly. She likes Perry, and she thinks he likes her, and she wants to keep it that way.

"Well, from one professional to another, I think my contact might be better left out of it."

"Uh-huh."

"And, much as I'd like to tell you, boss, I think it's better if I just…don't."

She shrugs apologetically. Perry muses into the air for a second.

"Okay. Protecting your sources."

"Yes."

"I can understand that."

"Thank you."

"Deep Throat, huh?"

She chokes delicately and looks up to find his face bemused. She keeps her expression flat and her voice deadpan.

"Let's just say I was handed the smoking gun and leave it at that."

"Uh-huh." His grin softens. Voice too. "Remember what I said, Chloe. If that gun's still hot, you don't wanna get caught in the next line of fire."

She nods again, quieted by his thoughtfulness. Perry stands up to leave.

"Like I said: be careful."

"I will be."

"Good." Perry stands and turns away, wandering back towards his office, his last words an exhaust trail on the air. "I'd hate to lose my favourite cub. Not to mention my morning coffee."


	6. Six

****

"The phrase, 'Win first, fight later,' can be summed up in the two words, 'Win beforehand.'"

She knew her boss was canny; she'd never pegged him for being wise. Or prescient. But it all falls down pretty much exactly as Perry predicted; with Locke Alliance and JMV out of commission, Docklands shares drop like a stone.

She's anticipated this too; but not the downpour, not the deluge. The day it's all due to happen she makes sure she's in the office before the 8 am start of trade. By 7.30 the phones start ringing – she knows that the stringers down at Market Hall, the main stock-trading floor, will be prepping their initial reports. By 7.45, every soul in the office is clustered around the television, and people are making notes already, in between answering calls and watching the tickertape spooling across the bottom of the screen. Perry stands in front with the remote, bites his bottom lip and barks out occasional orders. Chloe stands in the back and holds her breath.

But not for long. At 0800, the timer on the wall clicks over and things click into overdrive. Numbers, numbers – it's all numbers, and they're rising with every second. The talking head above the tickertape starts slow, but his second comment is about Docklands and Lexcorp. It all sounds so innocuous, but a ripple of murmur gallops through the gathered staff, and Chloe can feel it happening, feel it all around her, in the air, not physically present inside the Planet's office, but inside the gestalt of the Metropolis community. The balance of power moving, the world shifting subtly as they all watch the screen…

And in the last-minute window of real estate opportunity, Lexcorp has swept down, a falcon diving out of the blue sky, to begin an eleventh-hour buy-out of gargantuan proportions. Numbers rise, continue to climb, until well after various staff members are ordered back to their desks to begin reports, well after Chloe loses track of the math of share prices, dividends, blink-of-an-eye buys and sells.

By the time shares hit their zenith – at eight and a half times their original price – Lexcorp has seventy-three percent ownership. Harrison has maintained his existing shares and profited hugely by the association. Chloe, biting her thumbnail, stands with Jeff Linden and Perry as the tv displays the results. She listens to snippets of early reports from Market Hall, and stands, in fact, for another two and a half hours until the market caps trade, before all hell breaks loose. She and Perry share a look at the final figures, both of them sighing out tension – until she realises, _really_, what those figures amount to.

Lexcorp has earned itself a cool 7.2 billion.

Chloe's not sure what's more staggering – the dollar balance, or the fact that it's all been collected in a bare three hours of trade.

"God."

That's about all she can say. _God_. She knows Lex is a billionaire, but this is the first time she's understood what that means. _Billionaire_ – not just a measly one billion, but _billions_, and one billion equals a hundred thousand million, and one million equals so many hundreds of thousands, and one thousand –

She draws a shaky breath. Perry just cocks an eyebrow at her.

"And it's still just _land_, Sullivan. They haven't even started building on it yet."

There's no rejoinder to that; Perry's not expecting any. He glances at Chloe and Jeff in turn.

"Sullivan – you got the end-of-trade business community dissection. Jeff – gimme the full profile on Luthor. This paper goes to print at noon."

That's an afternoon edition – Perry wants to catch the post-work commuters. It'll mean a mad scramble, and Chloe actually shares a quick look with Jeff, until Perry catches them and his voice rises.

"Well, that's what they're paying us for, isn't it? C'mon people, get to work!"

And like a hurricane blast he whirls away, leaving them blowing and shaking and scurrying off in his wake.

oOo

**__**

"It is a good viewpoint to see the world as a dream. When you have something like a nightmare, you will wake up and tell yourself that it is only a dream. It is said that the world we live in is not a bit different from this."

__

C'mon people…

She and Jeff share the front page, to his intense irritation, but she doesn't care that he demands his byline run ahead of hers, because she gets to spend the latter part of the evening waltzing around her apartment with the subject of Linden's scrutiny. Watching Lex's eyes spark, seeing him laugh, full-throated, as he spins her around, dipping her over his arm before pulling her up for a kiss, is better than any consolation prize.

The celebrations go on for the better part of the night, but she doesn't have the heart to settle him down, not when he's like this – exultant, warm, generous. Large of gesture and emotion, and she curls in under his arm, presses her ear to his chest, feels the thud beneath the skin and feels like her own heart is about to burst.

She can't remember the last time she was this happy.

So four hours and an excess of champagne later, she's blurry-eyed at the office and totally taken off-guard when Perry grabs her arm in the hallway.

"Here – my office."

"What –"

"Wait."

He closes the door behind them as he steers her into the middle of his mess. Then he's rifling through papers on his desk, which gives her a chance to sit, but she's still gaping with confusion when he turns back to her. The notes he thrusts into her hands are white noise.

"Chloe, you need to see this. I've been checking the numbers – here, look, and here. Do you see it?"

She blinks at the mess of paper in her lap.

"Well, maybe if I knew what I was looking at…"

"Shit – sorry. Ah man…"

Perry starts pacing, scratching through his hair with one hand. Now she's getting worried, watching his agitation.

"Damnit. _Fine print_ – how many times have I told myself to check the fine print…" he mutters, then quickly returns to fix her with a stare. "Look, bear with me for a second, okay? It'll take me a minute to explain it all."

She sits back, flabbergasted.

"An explanation sounds good."

"Okay…" Perry pulls over a chair. Now they're both hunkered over the numbers sheets. "It took me a while to figure all this out because we've been going at it bass-ackwards. But I think I've got it now."

"Pardon me?"

"Honey, walk the garden path with me a while. We've all been getting ourselves worked up about Docklands, and who owned what, and when Luthor was going to make his move, right?"

She nods her head dumbly. Perry's eyes are like black pinpricks.

"Well, we've been missing the whole point. The question was never _when_. The question was _how_."

He takes the paperwork, shuffles it until he finds what he wants.

"Okay. Here's his listings – we know what he's got on the books, roughly. And here – thanks to you, we know he's just bought up a significant interest in the Casino. Now look –"

Perry's finger is pointing to numbers, scanning down lists of assets, dividends, profits, interest percentages. To Chloe, it all looks and feels like a dull blur.

"What, exactly, am I supposed to be –"

Perry's finger jabs, his eyes burn.

"Jesus, Chloe, _look_. Here's his net worth. Here's his net interest and profits. There's his assets. What has he sold off lately? Nothing. Nothing that would pad his bankroll enough to let him afford the kind of investments he's just made down at the pier."

He stops so suddenly she feels the air jerk out of her lungs. He stares at her, and his voice is deadly quiet.

"Where's the money coming from, Chloe?"

She blinks at him in the silence. Air is having trouble returning. For a whole second, she can't think at all.

"It's…it's…" She fights to marshal herself. "_Christ_, Perry, he's one of the richest men on the east coast – I mean, his father –"

"Uh-uh." Perry is shaking his head. "Ghost of Luthors past. Lex got the assets, but most of Lionel's profits were seized by the state, and the rest was frozen up in the legal wrangle. Lex has been pouring a small fortune into trying to get back what he thinks his father owes him, but he hasn't got his hands on it all yet."

The ball is back in her court, but she's still struggling for higher brain functions.

"So…so he's got something off-shore…" Perry shakes his head again; she's blinking furiously. "…or he's got a backer or something…"

Tension in her shoulders as she looks at Perry's face, and damnit, why didn't _she_ think about this, but it doesn't matter now because her editor is focussed on her, intent, cobra pre-strike. Then he sits back in his chair, which is maybe more disconcerting, because she knows what's coming next.

"I want to know where that money is coming from, Chloe. If Luthor has a backer, I want to know who it is. And if he doesn't have a backer…I want to know why."

There's a hollow jittering inside her, like when she got her first big break, but it's nothing to do with excitement now. She's still having trouble breathing. Perry's face, lined and grooved and worn, suddenly looks like it's made of cast-iron. His next words are a whisper.

"Is there a problem?" He leans in just the slightest bit. "Do we have a conflict of interest?"

She can only stare. He _knows_, and of course he fucking knows, from things he's said before, it's obvious, but this is _Perry_, of the mutual appreciation and the fellow-junkie club, and Jesus Christ he wasn't kidding about the line of fire because now he's putting her right in the middle of it. Fuck. And she's suddenly thinking this is some kind of test – of loyalty? of resolve? – but it doesn't matter –

"No," she says shakily.

"Are you sure? Because if there's –"

There's a sense of sinking, and she has to clear her throat, her voice still coming out a little hoarse, but she speaks quickly.

"I'm on it."

Automatic responses kick in and she's nodding. Standing up, using her legs like a reflex, out into the corridor where she wanders past crew-members, some of them still grinning and talking loud from the triumphs of the previous day, down to her desk, where she can finally stop, sit, exhale. And there's no respite, no time for head-in-your-hands, because she's starting to coalesce, crystallize, and focus is returning now, and she sits for five full minutes while things clear in the viewfinder…

__

Locke and JMV dispatched to corporate graveyard.

Harrison – the buddy factor.

Useful for the buy-out but…no. Not enough cash there.

Cash.

****

Think, damnit.

The money.

Where's the money coming fr-

And five minutes later she's on the phone. By noon she's in a bar off Sutherland, with a needle-thin man who has blonde hair, and a very neat suit, and a slight shake in his hands as he lifts his glass.

She asks very few questions, lets Nathan Rourke do all the talking for nearly an hour, and then finally he's saying 'I really wish we could have had this conversation over dinner' and he almost makes it sound flirtatious except for the fear in his voice. She's nodding, agreeing, her face white and her guts churning, and she just wants to get away from this place as fast as she can, far away, just walking and walking, running, disturbing the pigeons on the curb, bolting up the street, gasping, heedless of alley-mouths and noon-day shadows because Metropolis is full of them, and this is no city to which she belongs.

oOo

**__**

'The word gen_ means 'illusion' or 'apparition'. In India a man who uses conjury is called _genjutsushi_ ('a master of illusion technique'). Everything in this world is but a marionette show. Thus we use the word _gen_.'_

The park is quiet, and she sits on a bench there for a couple of hours, just watching the pigeons and the grass, watching the way people move as the day recedes, and she would have been happy to sit there a little longer but the light was fading and her bladder became demanding, so she ends up going to a hotel bar. Downs the first shot quickly, orders something slower, longs for cigarettes. Sits. Thinks. Watches the evaporation rings on the table-top. There aren't that many – it's a plush hotel, and the ultra-efficient waiter keeps wiping them away.

Now it's eight-thirty, and through sheer inevitability she turns her cell back on. It doesn't take long – there's time to watch the candle-behind-glass flicker, time to look out the vast clear windows and see cab lights travel two blocks at ground level.

Trill.

Pick up.

"Hi," she says softly.

She's half-expecting some sort of furious exclamation, a frantic inquisition. But his voice is low, hard and extremely controlled – it's kind of shocking.

"Come to the penthouse. Where are you now?"

"I'm…I'm at the Wyndham."

"I'll send a car. Be out front in ten minutes."

Click.

She sits with her ear to the phone and bites on her bottom lip, staring into space, listening to buzz for almost half the time it takes the limo to arrive.

The transitions from the hotel to the limo to the penthouse are a series of sensations: warm hotel, cold outside air, vacant humming car interior, chilly wind whipping in front of the penthouse, the dulled neutral foyer. The place is only half-lit after the end of the working day. Her boot heels sound loud on the varnished floor, and the limo driver walks her to the elevator, in spite of the fact that she knows the way. Standing in the elevator on the way up she feels like she's inside a big zero-g bubble, like if she let go of the handrail she would rise up, weightless, a loose collection of atoms.

But that's not going to happen. The elevator pings.

It only takes a second to spot him. He's sunk into a corner of his terracotta suede sofa, with one leg along its length and the other knee drawn up. He's resting a glass of scotch on his kneecap, and watching the liquid change colour as it warms.

She walks over, dumps her bag, and scoops the second glass up off the coffee table. Stands in front of him, and he watches her drain off half the booze before looking at his eyes. When he speaks, it's in a very soft even tone.

"Are you alright?"

"You didn't tell me. Why didn't you tell me, Lex?"

She's taken aback by how her voice is shaking, too quiet. But there's no chance to finish her scotch and take the edge off because he's replying.

"You didn't need to know." He hesitates, then amends. "I didn't want you to know."

"Well I know now." Quavering, wry.

He just nods. Then his mouth turns up sadly at the side.

"You're a good reporter, Chloe."

She can't help it, bursts out laughing. Hard, too raucous.

"Oh, Jesus…" She hiccups, sniffs and turns her head. "Oh god, this is great…"

She slumps down onto the other end of the sofa as he pulls his leg aside. Wipes at her eyes quickly with one hand, then sculls the rest of her scotch. He's propped up now, watching her reactions. Maybe the laughing scared him, because when he meets her eyes again he says the most ridiculous thing ever.

"I'm sorry, Chloe."

She closes her eyes and presses a palm to her forehead.

"Shut up a second, Lex."

Not caring how it makes him _feel_, because that'll be all aftermath. What she's trying to deal with is the picture, cleared now in her brain, and figuring out exactly where to find him in it. The picture is of him, though, so it's not so much a matter of finding him but rather confirming the positions of all his features. She settles her glass on the table, clears her throat, and starts ticking off things on her fingers.

"Okay, so you get rid of Locke and JMV. Which as far as the city is concerned is probably just a case of better the devil you know, so it doesn't really matter, does it?"

She's not looking at him. He'll pick it up, she's sure. Continuing on.

"And you already had Harrison in pocket, so that was easy. Nate already helped you out at the trial, so Harrison must really owe you big time for you to call in another favour… I'm still a little fuzzy on the details though – was it keeping Nate out of trouble or something?"

She finally skewers his gaze for an answer. He stares hard, licks his lips before replying.

"I made sure he got through rehab."

Chloe nods knowledgeably.

"Of course. Sure, that makes sense." She knows she's being ruthless, but she doesn't care. "Okay, so that's Harrison. But Walter wasn't really financial enough to beef you up for the buy-out, and Lionel's cash is all still locked up in the Caymans, so…"

All this has obviously pushed a button or something because Lex stands abruptly, taking their glasses to the bar nearby. The bottle on the counter loses another two doubles by the time he turns around. It makes sense at this point for him to speak first.

"It was right from the beginning – when Fortuna first bought up the casino and Owens needed backers, I bought in."

Chloe nods again. This has answered one question, so now she just waits. Lex takes a hit of alcohol before going on.

"And _no_ – I didn't know about the porn until one of the accountants broke and told me. That came later, and by the time I found out it was well up and running. It doesn't take long for the pedophiles to start swarming when it comes to that stuff."

He has such an ill-concealed look of revulsion on his face that Chloe can only swallow and stop. But she has to press on, and because he volunteered so much her tone levels off, less scathing by a few degrees.

"So, when Owens got busted you just took over the rest of what you already owned – a quick rub with the lemon, and the invisible ink turned to black, is that it? Somehow you managed to hide your part of the operation from the cops – but hey, that was probably the easy part. And Owens had been kicking over a share of the cash-cleaning business to you for long enough to bankroll the buy-up…" She stares, then can't help it. Closes her eyes and shakes her head. "Jesus, Lex. All those little kids…"

It's like a pain in her heart. She's rubbing her breastbone now, feeling the ache building in her head. When she opens her eyes, he's leaning on the bar, holding his glass so tightly that his knuckles are white, staring at her. And the way he looks, the edge of indignation and anger, is so out of place that something moves in her, clicks into place…

Stop. Blink. Stare.

"Oh, fuck. It was you. Anonymous phone call, my ass – it was –"

"_Well what the fuck did you expect me to do?_" His voice is a contained explosion in the quiet hollow of the room. Then the calm face, the neutral face, struggles and returns. "Jesus. It was a fucking impossible situation anyway. Owens had gone behind my back, and his 'side interests' were a liability. The phone call was the only sensible solution. And no, I didn't make the call myself if that's what you're thinking."

He drinks to settle himself, then as she watches there's a snap. His face contorts, he turns, and her eyes go large when his scotch glass rockets out of his hand, the force of his throw sending it as far as the marble fireplace. Sound of glass shattering.

"**_FUCK_**."

Now he's standing with his face in his hands, and Chloe feels like her world is falling to pieces around her, because this is not normal, this is not Lex, this is not like him at all and so something is terribly, horribly _wrong_.

"God…" Her words come out soft as she stands and steps tentatively closer, hands reaching a little. "Jesus – Lex, it's okay… C'mon, it's alright…"

When she touches his shoulder he's trembling. Trying not to respond in kind she edges in, but can't take her measure until he releases his hands. And his face is white, and his eyes are hollow, ghostly, as he straightens. She tries reasoning, consoling, even though she doesn't know why.

"Hey, it's okay… I mean, I know about it, but we'll handle it. When Rourke told me about it all I was freaked out, y'know? But I'm fine now, and we can –"

He meets her gaze blearily.

"Rourke is dead."

Chloe freezes.

"What?"

Lex sighs out.

"Rourke is dead. I'm not the only casino shareholder, Chloe. People are protecting their business now. Rourke spoke to a reporter - that made him an expendable asset. And it makes you a target. They don't know about us, and I'm not sure that it would matter if they did. I've gotta get you out of the country."

The blood leaves her face so fast it feels like dying. She has to swallow before she can stammer out a breathless word.

"How much time?"

"About twelve hours, at the outside."

She staggers, but he catches her. Now it's him holding her shoulders.

oOo


	7. Seven

**__**

'It is said that even after one's head has been cut off, one can still perform some function.'

The office is utterly silent at three a.m. There's a box, and she's throwing stuff into it – little things, mementos mostly – but she can't really see too clearly because it's dark, and her eyes keep tearing up.

Shit.

She stops to blow her nose, wipe her eyes. The cough from the corner makes her jump, cry out –

"Chloe."

She puts a hand to her chest, feeling the familiarity of the gesture.

"_Jesus_."

"Sorry."

Perry walks closer and she stabs him with a glance.

"I really wish you'd stop doing that."

He materializes into the lamplight, tired, and casually if somewhat haphazardly dressed. She wonders for a second how he got past the security guy Lex stationed at the door. Well, it _is_ White's paper.

"Guess you won't have to worry about me sneaking up on you any more."

She smiles thinly.

"Guess not. And I guess you'll have to make your own coffee in the morning."

He grins.

"Oh, I'm not worried about that. Jeff'll make it. I think he's picked up a few tips from you after all."

She has to snort at that. Perry pushes back a few folders and leans on the desk. He watches her for a long moment.

"Smoking gun, huh?"

Chloe can't look at him.

"Well, you were the one who put me in front of it, so you should know."

He's silent, but she can feel the remorse in the air. She throws her desk nameplate into the box before giving up, sighing out, rubbing her hands through her hair.

"Damnit." She squeezes the bridge of her nose. "They never figured out who Deep Throat was in the end, did they?"

Perry cocks his head with a rueful grin.

"No. But there was plenty of speculation." He squares his shoulders. "Chloe, you don't have to do this. You're a top-notch journalist – a little young, but still top-notch."

She's shaking her head in the negative.

"Look, no offence, but –"

"You'd be a top-notch journalist anywhere in the world. Even in, say, Europe?"

He's holding out a coloured slip, and when she takes it numbly, feeling the solidity, seeing her name typed there, words have a little trouble emerging.

"What – how did you –"

"I was told that the plane ticket might be better coming from me."

She's staring now, feeling incredibly stupid.

"But – I quit…"

"You didn't quit, Sullivan," Perry murmurs jauntily. "I'm promoting you. Overseas correspondent."

Her head is whirling all over again. She shakes it hard.

"Is this for real?"

Perry laughs.

"Sure it is, kid."

"I –" She swallows. "Boss, I don't know what to say."

"Say thank you," he grins.

"Thank you."

"No problem." He rises and smiles. "I'll miss you, Chloe. Jeff's coffee always tastes like crap."

Then he turns, and starts walking. When her wits scramble together, she calls out to his retreating back, only managing one word:

"Perry –"

He looks over his shoulder, face suddenly ravaged with fatigue, half in and out of shadow.

"You forgot, huh? Or didn't you realise? Check the fine print, Chloe. I run the Planet - but Lexcorp still owns fifty-four percent."

She's still gaping when the door closes behind him.

oOo

**__**

"It is unthinkable to be disturbed at something like being ordered to become a ronin_. People at the time of Lord Katsushige used to say, 'If one has not been a _ronin_ at least seven times, he will not be a true retainer.'…One should understand that it is something like being a self-righting doll."_

Flight QF632 to Paris, departing 0715hrs.

Her exhaustion palpable, like a thick film over her skin. She will check-in ten minutes before the gate is due to close, and there will be a heavy-set man – the limo driver, in fact – to take her all the way (_she thinks of old westerns - being escorted to the city limits, being thrown out of town_). She will recline in her business class seat and think about how Lana – god, so long ago – how Lana returned from France so changed.

Will _she_ change? Will she return?

She will waive breakfast and close the window and pray for sleep.

She will not see him for a long long time.

She will not think about it.

And he has assured her that he will take care of the apartment, her belongings, all the detritus of her life that she had to leave behind without so much as a look around – everything that she managed to salvage, anything of importance, sent over to the penthouse in a box by a security guy who rifled through her stuff on her behalf. The embarrassment of packing, of sorting through underwear and toiletries that have been collected by a stranger.

Her home, now a forbidden place.

Time spent waiting, sitting tentatively on the sofa, picking at food, listing essentials. Lex, busy in staccato, on the phone, arranging flights, arranging visas, organising, stepping out for a moment, coming back – when he's gone there's always a man standing quietly by the entrance, to whom she feels obliged to make a weak, forced smile.

She thinks about the night before – how many hours ago was that? – the night before this one, when Lex had danced with her, and she had smiled into his neck, and touched his skin… It's enough to make her swallow back a sob.

Earlier ground-shattering moments, tremors of minor earthquakes, when she and Lex had fought. She shook her head, and closed her eyes, and locked her jaw, head down, hair over her face – resistant, so resistant – until he knelt in front of her and took her hand and explained with awful insistence the necessity of it all. His grief-stricken tone, saying 'I don't think I can protect you, Chloe,' and it's this admission of defeat, his expression – unconquerable, conquered by this – which finally convinced her.

She will not think about it.

And she will not dwell on her return from the Planet, with her sad sagging box of things, which she felt like throwing into the fireplace to keep his broken scotch glass company. Brandishing the ticket in her hand, her glare feeling like a cheap shot, because it was her own fault for being so naieve and stupid and unaware. Lex, sighing, walking over to take the box and set it down, and drawing her in to hold her, in the little time that they have left.

And she will not see him for along long time, and when she smoothes a hand over the echoing smoothness of his skull it feels like grieving, the unfairness of having to say their goodbyes in the limo because he can't even risk walking into the airport with her.

What a mess this has all turned out to be.

She will not think about it.

At 0730hrs, when the plane is rumbling, rising, she will not think about any of it, only the texture of the blanket on her knee, the brush of the pillow against her cheek, the hard moulded plastic beneath her elbow…

__

Metropolis, spread out in all its acrid glory.

Perry, laughing at some observation, coffee mug in one hand and hot copy on his lap.

The scratch of her pencil, sitting at her desk, harsh fluorescent office lights.

The comforting warmth of her apartment – soft rug, yellow sun.

__

His hands gripping hers so tightly on the drive, and not wanting to let her go.

The sound, the smell of him.

Kissing his neck, kissing his forehead, kissing his lips.

Brush of damp on her hand, touching his face.

Moving away, moving back, moving away at last.

And she will not think about it, will not think about any of it, and she will be soaring – miles, miles and miles above - and there will be no Truth, and there will be no Right, no Wrong, no Metropolis, no Lex – no anything, as the plane banks and turns, clouds whisper in parting and her soul takes flight.

Fin

****

'Under the deep snows in the last village

Last night a single branch of plum blossomed.'

A/N: Ronin_ – a former samurai swordsman who, after disgrace or the death of his master, works as a mercenary blade-for-hire. Thank you everyone, for reading. And once again, a great big thank you to kathe, for her tireless support, sound advice, and initial inspiration. Hope this didn't come out too bass-ackwards._


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